What this site is
CityTown is a practical city reference for travellers. Each city gets one hub page and ten focused guides — where to stay, what things actually cost, when to go, how to get from the airport, which day trips are worth the ride, and which ones aren’t. We currently cover 25 cities across Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania, and we’d rather cover fewer cities properly than hundreds of them thinly.
We’re not trying to be Wikipedia, and we’re not trying to be TripAdvisor. We answer the specific questions you type when you’re actually planning: “is the transit pass worth it for three days”, “which neighbourhood should a first-timer book”, “do I need a local SIM or an eSIM”. The answer goes at the top of the page, with the reasoning underneath.
Reference, not hype
Most travel content is written to make you excited. Ours is written to make you prepared. That means every guide follows a few house rules:
- Every recommendation carries a reason. “Book near a metro stop on this line because the network shuts at midnight” — not “a great base for exploring”.
- Every guide includes honest negatives: what’s overrated, what’s a tourist trap, what’s annoying about the place. If a famous attraction isn’t worth the queue, we say so.
- Prices come with a currency and a date, because a price without a date is a guess.
- Verdicts are verdicts. You’ll get “best overall: late May; best value: November”, not “it depends on what you’re looking for”.
How the guides are built
Each city page starts from structured data pulled from open sources — GeoNames for population and geography, Open-Meteo for climate normals, Wikipedia and Wikidata for facts like currency and plug types, and OpenStreetMap for points of interest. On top of that data sits editorial writing that is drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor before publication: facts checked, prices sanity-checked and dated, venues verified to exist, and the hype stripped out. Every guide shows a “Reviewed” date, and that date only changes when a person has actually re-checked the page. The full detail is in our editorial policy.
How the site pays for itself
Some links on CityTown are affiliate links: if you book a hotel, tour or eSIM through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Those links never decide what we recommend — the negative takes stay in either way — and there are no display ads on the site. The full picture, including which networks we work with, is on how we make money.
Who’s behind it
CityTown is UK-owned and operated by Devonil Hosting [OWNER TO SUPPLY: registered legal entity name and company number]. The site is edited by Amr Elselimy, who reviews the guides and sets the editorial rules above. It’s a small operation on purpose: fewer pages, checked harder.
Spotted something wrong, out of date, or suspiciously enthusiastic? Tell us via the contact page — corrections make the site better and we take them seriously.