About

Out of Ten is a small, anonymous travel journal. We review flights, hotels, resorts, restaurants and attractions the same way — with a scorecard, ten dimensions, and no punches pulled.

We don't take press trips. We don't accept comps. We pay full price, at the same time as everyone else, and we book the same rooms and seats you would book. Nobody we review knows we're reviewing them until the piece goes up, and by then we're already back home.

The Manifesto

Modern travel writing is broken. Half of it is press junkets, half of it is affiliate SEO, and almost none of it is honest. Reviewers get flown business class, tucked into a suite, handed a spa credit and a bottle of Ruinart, and then asked for their "authentic impressions" three days later. What could possibly go wrong.

Out of Ten is the opposite. We are three people who love travel and hate being lied to. We fund it ourselves. We travel as regular guests. We book on Skyscanner and Booking.com like everyone else. We eat what our kids want, we queue when they say queue, and we get charged what we get charged.

Then we score it. Ten categories. Zero out of ten if it was cynical, ten out of ten if it was extraordinary. The math is unforgiving on purpose.

We stay anonymous because the moment a hotel knows you're a reviewer, the review is worthless. You get a different room, a different attitude, and a different bill. So we don't tell anyone. Not the hotels, not the airlines, not our own families, not each other's employers. That's the whole point.

We paid, in full, every time. No comps. No gifts. No affiliate money from anyone mentioned here.

The Rubric

Every review scores ten dimensions from 0 to 10. Totals convert to a verdict:

YES — 7.5 and above. Book it. Even the flaws are worth it.
MAYBE — 5.5 to 7.4. Situational. Great for some trips, wrong for others. We'll tell you which.
NO — under 5.5. Don't bother. There's better value elsewhere.

What we score

The ten dimensions vary slightly by category — a flight is not a beach club — but they always answer these ten questions:

Booking & Arrival. Was getting in the door pleasant, or was it already a fight?
Space & Setting. Room, cabin, table, view. Does it deliver on the photos?
Cleanliness. The one non-negotiable. Below 8 is a red card.
Service. Warm, competent, present when you need them, invisible when you don't.
Food & Drink. Not just the menu — the sourcing, the pacing, the value.
The Product. Whatever you're actually paying for. Bed, seat, waterslide, gondola.
The Extras. Kids' clubs, spas, gyms, entertainment, wifi. The stuff they don't put on the price list.
Feel. The intangible. Is this place happy? Do the staff want to be here?
Value. Did we walk out feeling well-treated, or expensively fleeced?
Would We Return. The only honest test.

Nothing is weighted. All ten count equally. If a hotel has spectacular rooms but treats its staff badly, it will not get above a seven. If a budget airline flies you safely, on time, with a smile — it might beat first class.

Who We Are

You don't get to know. That is deliberate.

We are three people, based in Europe, who between us cover most of Western Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. We travel with children, without children, for work, for weddings, alone, and — very occasionally — in absolute luxury we paid for ourselves. We are not journalists. We are not influencers. We do this because we wish it had existed when we were planning our own trips.

The moment anyone finds out who we are, we stop. That's the promise.

Contact

Tip-offs, corrections, and hate mail: hello@outoften.travel

We read everything. We reply to almost nothing. Please don't be offended.

We do not accept:

Press trip invitations.
Affiliate partnership pitches.
PR agencies emailing us "on behalf of" anyone.
Requests to preview reviews before publication.

We do welcome:

Corrections. If we got a fact wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Trip requests. What should we review next?
Notes from readers. We keep those.