Affiliate Disclosure

The transparency thesis

The category we cover — luxury travel, wellness, medical, and the adjacent advisory services — has historically been opaque about how its publishers get paid. Glossy magazines accepted hosted stays and rarely disclosed them. Booking-engine "best of" lists ranked by commission, not quality. Concierge services took kickbacks the client never saw on the invoice.

We chose the opposite default. Indagare's membership model proved that serious travellers will pay a premium publisher who is candid about where the revenue comes from and what protects it from the editorial. That is the model we follow, with one update: we publish the methodology in plain language on the open web rather than burying it inside a member portal.

The headline disclosure

When you book or purchase through a commission-linked link on this site, we earn 8–12% of the booking subtotal from the operator at no additional cost to you. The exact percentage varies by partner and by product category. The figure is paid only after the booking is confirmed and, in most cases, only after the service is consumed.

That language is the verbatim disclosure required by the US Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides, the UK Advertising Standards Authority's CAP Code, and equivalent regimes in the EU. It appears on every article that contains a commission-linked link, in the link tooltip, in the email confirmations we send, and in the lead-magnet PDFs we distribute.

The full list of partner programs

The roster below covers every active affiliate relationship we maintain. The "type" column describes what the partner sells; the "commission" column describes how we get paid. We update this list whenever a partner is added or dropped.

How we choose what to recommend

The vetting process runs before any commercial relationship is on the table. Editors nominate operators based on first-hand reporting, reader correspondence, and category research. The operator is graded against a published rubric (service quality, value relative to category, consistency over time, ethical sourcing where relevant, accessibility, and the specifics of what they actually deliver). Operators are ranked, written up, and assigned a verdict — "Editor's pick", "Best for X", "Skip this one" — before the affiliate desk is consulted on whether a commercial link exists.

A partner's commission rate has no influence on placement, ranking, or verdict. We have refused requests to remove critical lines, to lift a ranking in exchange for a higher commission, and to run sponsored content disguised as editorial. Those refusals are documented in our internal rejection log; we will share redacted entries on request.

How to spot affiliated content

Every commission-linked link on the site carries a visible badge: a small Commission-linked tag, placed inline with the link or in a tooltip on hover. Affiliate links also carry a tracking parameter on the URL (<code>?ref=alg</code>) so you can audit them yourself. If a link does not carry the badge or the parameter, no commission is paid on it.

Articles that contain at least one commission-linked link display a short banner under the byline summarising the disclosure and pointing back to this page. Newsletters that contain commission-linked links repeat the disclosure in the footer of the email.

Lead-magnet PDFs and downloads

Each downloadable resource we publish — destination guides, clinic short-lists, currency-routing checklists, and similar formats — opens with a one-page disclosure summarising which links inside the document are commission-linked, which are pure editorial picks with no commercial relationship, and which are partner sponsorships paid for by the brand named on the cover. The colophon repeats the headline disclosure ("we earn 8–12% of the booking subtotal") and links back to this page.

Sponsored content and gifted experiences

We occasionally accept sponsored placements. Sponsored content is labelled "Sponsored" at the top and bottom of the article, with a one-line disclosure naming the sponsor and the consideration received. Sponsored content does not carry editorial verdict badges and is excluded from our "Best of" lists.

For some reviews we accept hosted stays or press-trip access. We disclose this at the foot of the article in plain language ("This review was based on a hosted two-night stay; we covered our own travel costs"). A hosted stay never guarantees a positive review. Where we found a hosted experience to be sub-standard, we have said so on the record.

What this means for you

You can read every article on the site without paying anything. You can use any commission-linked link without paying anything extra. You can also bypass our links entirely by going to the operator's site directly — the recommendation is unchanged either way.

If you do choose to book through us, thank you. The commission funds the next round of reporting: another set of clinic visits, another property audit, another translator. That is the entire economic loop.

How commissions enter our books

Commission income is reconciled monthly against partner reports and our own click logs. Discrepancies above a five-per-cent threshold are flagged and queried with the partner; discrepancies above twenty per cent for two consecutive months trigger a partnership review. The line shows up as a single revenue category in the annual operating report alongside subscriber revenue, sponsored research, and event income. We do not compensate editors based on commission earned by their articles. We do not run a per-article commission scoreboard internally because that would create the wrong incentives.

Because some commissions are paid only after a service is consumed, there is a structural lag between the day a reader books and the day the commission lands. A booking made today for a stay six months out will not show up in our books for at least seven months in most programmes. We do not chase short-term commission revenue at the expense of long-term reader trust; the lag is one of several reasons why.

What disqualifies an operator

A handful of conditions remove an operator from consideration regardless of commission rate. Documented health-and-safety failures that the operator has not remediated. Documented mistreatment of staff (wage theft, withholding passports, unsafe living conditions). Verified deceptive marketing — claims of credentials, awards, or partnerships that do not exist. Operators who refuse to confirm standard pricing and inclusions on the record. Operators in categories we do not cover at all (we maintain a published exclusion list for those).

The list of operators we have considered and rejected runs into the hundreds. We do not publish the rejection list; doing so would expose us to defamation actions in jurisdictions where the operator threshold for litigation is low. We will, on a confidential basis, tell a serious enquirer whether we considered a specific operator and what category of concern, if any, came up during vetting.

Questions and corrections

For specifics on a particular relationship, write to editorial@northamericaluxuryguide.com. For formal questions about commercial structure or compliance, write to legal@northamericaluxuryguide.com.

Last updated: May 7, 2026. Operated by North America Luxury Guide Ltd.