About Us: Who We Are and How We Test

Rufus Clouston is a journal for travel and hotels. Honest guides for the curious traveller, written by people who book and pay, not salesmen.

Who we are

We are a small crew of writers and frequent travellers who got tired of sales brochures pretending to be advice. Rufus Clouston started in 2019 as a shared notebook of hotel stays and city walks, passed between friends who kept asking the same question: where should I stay, really?

Today the site reaches thousands of monthly readers planning trips across Europe, Asia and the Americas. We are independent, we take no sponsored placements, and we keep the whole archive free to read.

Our mission

Our mission is simple: give travellers the information a good friend would give them. Every week we publish free news and buying guides across five sections: Stays, City Guides, Beach Escapes, Luxury Travel and Travel Tips. Real 2026 prices, tested rooms, transit notes and packing advice you can act on before you book.

We would rather tell you a hotel is overpriced than pad a list to fill it. If five stays are worth your money, we name five, not fifteen.

Editorial standards

No sponsored picks and no pay-to-rank lists. We buy at retail what we test, disclose any relationship, and correct mistakes in public within 48 hours. Numbers come from our own bookings, transit operators and official tourism boards, never from press releases. If a product fails in real use, we say so.

When we recommend a destination or a stay, we tell you the trade-off. A beach that is only swimmable at low tide, a hotel with thin walls, a rail pass that only pays off on long trips. The caveat is part of the guide.

The team

• Rufus Clouston, editor and lead writer, twelve years of independent travel.
• Maya Ellison, hotels and luxury trains, a decade of reviewing stays.
• Tom Baird, city and safari reporting, formerly a tour guide in East Africa.
• Priya Nair, markets, food and packing, based between two continents.
• Jonas Keller, coastlines and insurance, a former rescue swimmer.

Supported by contributing testers who review every guide before it ships. If a claim does not hold up on the ground, it does not go out under our name.

Talk to us

Corrections, pitches or a hotel we should test? Email us at [email protected], or use the contact page. We reply within one business day, and we read every message, even when we cannot feature every one.

If you are planning a trip, start with the Stays section or our most recent guide to hotel deals in Europe.

Where we cite standards or safety advice, we point readers to public bodies such as UN Tourism and national tourism boards, alongside our own reporting.