About Us

Like you, we had no idea who to trust for travel advice.

That’s why we made TripSavvy, a travel site written by real experts, not anonymous reviewers. Our writers are locals with hometown pride, parents who are road trip heroes, cruise junkies who know every ship at sea, and virtually everyone else in-between.

As one of the top-10 travel information sites in the world as measured by comScore, a leading Internet measurement company, we have more than 50 writers—from lifetime locals to licensed tour guides—sharing useful travel advice and inspiration from destinations around the world. TripSavvy has been honored by multiple awards since its inception, including the Eppy Awards, the W3 Awards, and the Communicator Awards.

You’ll find that our 20-year-strong library of more than 30,000 articles will make you a savvy traveler—showing you how to book a hotel the whole family will love, where to find the best bagel in New York City, and how to skip the lines at theme parks. We give you the confidence to spend your vacation actually vacationing, not fumbling with a guidebook or second-guessing yourself.

Here are three principles that guide our coverage:

Accuracy and integrity: We rigorously vet and update each article on the site using our staff and an army of freelance travel editors. Additionally, we don’t accept payment in exchange for coverage, ensuring that the places we write about and recommend are actually as cool as we say they are.
Cultivated recommendations: We don’t just recommend everything—we only recommend the best. Unlike overwhelming review sites, our writers use their local knowledge to suggest the places that are worth your time, whether you’re traveling for a business trip or family vacation.

Expertise: Most of our writers live and work every day in the destinations they write about. They can tell you how to catch the bus, where to find the best croissant and everything in between.

TripSavvy, vacation like a pro.

Editorial Guidelines

Our in-house editorial staff oversees every article on our site. We aim to provide a thorough library of travel content that lets travelers find inspiration, plan their trips, and give them valuable guidance once they are on the ground.

Unlike many popular travel sites which rely on writers “parachuting” in to produce single stories, most of our writers are experts in their particular destinations and topics—they know everything from the best beaches, bars, and boutiques, to the best luggage to buy and the apps you must download before you go.

We add relevant links to our content that may help you further your knowledge or enrich your planning about a specific destination. Occasionally, we link to outside websites if they’re relevant to the story, especially in the case of directing readers to businesses, or products that we have tested and recommend. In some cases, we may receive a small commission should you click a link and make a purchase. All of these links are clearly labeled. Learn more about our product review process here.

At TripSavvy, we aspire to provide the highest quality content produced by humans, for humans. It is against our guidelines to publish automatically generated content using AI (artificial intelligence) writing tools such as ChatGPT.

Quality Standards

The world changes every day, and your travel guide should, too. Our editors review our text, images, and illustrations before publishing to make sure that our articles are accurate and of the highest quality.

Once a story has been published, we have a stable of experienced freelance editors responsible for fact-checking and updating our content library, regularly ensuring that every piece of content on the site informs, is accurate, and is free of ethical concerns, conflicts, or misinformation. Spot something out of date? Let us know by emailing us at contact@tripsavvy.com.

In addition to our editors, our team also consists of visual editors and illustrators, as well as product managers, designers, and engineers monitor who monitor the usage of our sites, per our Privacy Policy, to improve your experience across all devices and develop new features.

Ethics

Like many other travel publications, TripSavvy editors and select contributors often work with tourism boards, tour operators, brands, and hotel properties to support our coverage. In an era when many independent media outlets are struggling to survive, this is one way to support our writers when they are on the road and allow them to have firsthand access to locations and experiences that are otherwise cost-prohibitive. These experiences enable TripSavvy to produce robust, thoroughly-researched stories that present a broad overview of a destination.

With that, we do not cover any destinations, restaurants, hotels, or tours that we wouldn’t personally recommend. Furthermore, we do not accept monetary compensation in exchange for coverage. Our experts and contributors are required to abide by the FTC disclosure guidelines.

Diversity & Inclusion

TripSavvy’s mission, vacation like a pro, includes everyone. It’s our responsibility as a travel site to speak out about the discrimination and injustices that people of color face every day, not only while traveling but also while at home or in their own neighborhoods. Things need to change, and we are committed to doing our part to fight systemic racism and oppression through our content.

We want everyone to feel at home in the world; we will use our platform to spread a message of inclusivity, equality, and human rights across the globe by sharing diverse voices, promoting unique businesses, and adequately addressing that the travel experience might be different for Black travelers and those from historically marginalized communities. We are actively listening and learning every day how we can better cater to our diverse community of readers.

For our full diversity pledge, click here.

About the TripSavvy Editors’ Choice Awards

Each year, TripSavvy editors award the best restaurants, hotels, and attractions around the world.

To select winners, our team of data engineers identified more than 60,000 recommended hotels, restaurants, and attractions within TripSavvy’s 30,000 travel advice articles, then created an aggregated, weighted star score (1-5) for each business based on key data points:

Star ratings from top review sites
The authority of those rating sites
TripSavvy audience data

Any business that scored higher than 4.2 was passed on to editors for consideration. Our team of 50+ editors and writers based around the world hand-reviewed businesses based on several factors:

Category fit: Does the business genuinely represent the best of its category?
Reader behavior: How much time do TripSavvy users spend reading about this business, posting about it on social media, or returning to the article?
Newsworthiness: Is the business or destination in the spotlight this year?
In-person experience: What is this business like in real life? Does it live up to its expectations, or would it be a waste of a traveler’s time?

Editors made the ultimate decision for each award winner, taking into consideration all of the above factors.

The TripSavvy Team

Our travel-obsessed editorial team is committed to helping you plan fantastic vacations, whether you’re heading to Florida, Sri Lanka, or anywhere in-between. Meet our team:

Elspeth is the Vice President & Group General Manager of Dotdash Meredith's Travel Group. Previously, she served as the Associate Group GM for Dotdash Meredith's Beauty & Style group, and as the GM for two of the company's food brands: Serious Eats and Simply Recipes. Prior, Elspeth spent time in the travel world as a founding editor of TripSavvy, one of Dotdash Meredith's travel brands, and editor at Luxury Escapes, an Australian eCommerce site based in Melbourne. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, Playboy, and International and Australian Traveller. Elspeth graduated with a degree in Communications and Journalism from Fordham University.

Susmita Baral is TripSavvy’s travel editor. She is a New York-based multimedia journalist with a decade of experience covering food, travel, climate science, and culture. Her work has appeared in BBC Travel, Eater, Harper's Bazaar, GQ, VICE, National Geographic, Teen Vogue, Health, HuffPost, Popular Science, Quartz, and more. Susmita has yet to visit a destination she wouldn't return back to and never travels internationally without a box of Cheez-Its stashed in her suitcase.

Jamie Hergenrader is the Commerce Director of the Travel Group at Dotdash Meredith where she leads the content strategy of product reviews and recommendations for the company's travel brands. She joined the company in 2018 and has nearly a decade of experience writing and editing for travel and lifestyle publications.

Taylor McIntyre is a senior visual editor at Dotdash Meredith, working on Travel + Leisure and TripSavvy. She has been with Dotdash since 2018. She photographs and writes about a variety of locations, from city guides to luxury hotels. Her love of travel started when she backpacked on her own for a year, traveling through 30 different countries. Her work has been featured in ArchitecturalDigest.com, Touring Bird, Port Magazine, StyleCaster, and more.

Jalyn Robinson is an assistant travel editor at Dotdash Meredith, working for both Travel + Leisure and TripSavvy. She started at TripSavvy in 2021 and joined Travel + Leisure in 2023. During her time at Dotdash Meredith, she has contributed countless stories to both brands, from personal experiences, like her first cruise on the then-largest cruise ship in the world, to covering stories about travel inclusivity. She's also created multiple TikTok videos and Reels and continues to manage TripSavvy's daily newsletter and social media. Jalyn loves all aspects of travel — even sitting at the airport for hours on end — and is slowly checking destinations off her bucket list.

Joyce Lue is the UX/UI designer at Dotdash Meredith. Her work appears on TripSavvy, Treehugger, Lifewire, and ThoughtCo.

Our Writers

Our writers are on-the-ground experts—they speak the local language, know how to catch their city’s tram, train or bus, and definitely have tabs on the best of everything in town, from cocktails to kids’ menu. Many have even written guidebooks on their destinations.

Meet some of our writers:

Elizabeth Heath has lived in the Umbria region of Italy since 2009 and has been writing for TripSavvy since 2017. She has also written for Frommer's, The Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, and more.

Mike Aquino is a travel writer covering Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. He lives in Manila full-time, but is perfectly at home in a Singapore hawker center.

Lawrence Ferber is a New York-based travel writer who has covered LGBTQ-friendly destinations around the world since 2001.

Nicole Brewer is a Black serial expat based in Oman. She writes about the Middle East for TripSavvy and is the author of "A Guide to Landing an English Teaching Job Abroad."

2018 OMMA Awards

Online Advertising Creativity: UX/UI

2018 Communicator Awards

Websites - General - Travel/Tourism
Features - Visual Appeal/Aesthetics
Features - User Experience

2018 W3 Awards

Silver Winner, Website Visual Appeal – Aesthetics

2017 Eppy Award

Best Overall Website Design

Product Reviews

We research and recommend a broad range of products and create curated lists of recommendations for your trips. We do receive an affiliate commission on some (but not all) of the products that we recommend if you decide to click through to the retailer site and make a purchase. Our process is purely editorial to bring you the best options of every product category we cover. Learn more about our review process.

About Dotdash Meredith

Dotdash Meredith is the largest digital and print publisher in America. From mobile to magazines, nearly 200 million people trust us to help them make decisions, take action, and find inspiration. Dotdash Meredith's over 50 iconic brands include PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Verywell, FOOD & WINE, The Spruce, Allrecipes, Byrdie, REAL SIMPLE, Investopedia, Southern Living and more.

Senior Management Team

Learn more about the team behind Dotdash Meredith here.

Contact Us

Have a comment to share or a suggestion to make? We look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to reach out by emailing contact@tripsavvy.com.

For press inquiries, email us at press@tripsavvy.com.

If you would rather call us or send us a letter, you can reach us at 28 Liberty Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10005 | 212-204-4000.

Work With Us

Join our crew of top-notch editors, designers, programmers, and others as we continue to make a difference in the lives of our readers.

View job openings

Write for Us

We are always looking for experienced, qualified digital travel writers who share in our mission to provide practical, trustworthy travel information. If that’s you, send a few examples of your published work to this email address: write@tripsavvy.com

Please note that we do not accept unsolicited guest-authored articles, blogs, or posts.

Advertise With Us

TripSavvy offers the highest value to advertisers through a combination of scale, credibility, and intent. Interested in advertising with us? Email us at sales@tripsavvy.com or check out our media kit to learn more.