This page explains how CityTown guides get made: where the data comes from, how pages are written and checked, how we use AI, and what happens when we get something wrong. If you only read one line, read this one: nothing on this site is published without a human reviewing it, and nothing we’re paid on changes what we recommend.
Where our city data comes from
The factual backbone of every city page — coordinates, population, timezone, climate, currency, languages, plug types, emergency numbers, points of interest — is pulled from established open data sources rather than typed in by hand:
- GeoNames — canonical city names, country, coordinates, population, timezone and administrative region.
- Open-Meteo — monthly climate normals (average highs and lows, rainfall, rain days) that power our climate charts and best-time-to-visit verdicts.
- Wikipedia and Wikidata — background facts such as currency, official languages, plug and voltage standards, and airport codes. Used as a facts seed, never copied verbatim.
- OpenStreetMap — candidate lists of attractions, museums, viewpoints, markets and parks. These are candidates only: an editor decides what actually earns a place in a guide, and what gets flagged as skippable.
Details these sources don’t cover — daily budget estimates, transit-pass maths, neighbourhood judgements — are researched from public sources, cross-checked, and always stated with a date. Each guide lists the sources it relied on at the bottom of the page.
How we use AI — and where humans come in
We’ll be straightforward about this, because hiding it would be a bigger problem than saying it: CityTown guides are drafted with AI assistance, working from the structured city data described above, and then reviewed by a human editor before publication. AI does the first draft and the data-wrangling. A person is responsible for what actually goes live.
Human review isn’t a skim. For each reviewed page, the editor checks that:
- prices are plausible and carry a date;
- transport facts are cross-checked against the official transit operator’s site;
- every venue, attraction and tour named on the page actually exists and is open — no invented places, ever;
- safety and scam descriptions reflect real, reported patterns rather than generic filler;
- any affiliate placements follow the rules on our how we make money page.
If a page fails review, it doesn’t get a quick patch — it triggers a deeper check of every page for that city.
The “Reviewed” date means something
Every guide displays a “Reviewed” date. That date changes only when a human has actually re-checked the page — not when we fix a typo, and never as a trick to look fresh. If a guide says “Reviewed July 2026”, a person looked at its facts in July 2026. Prices on the site follow the same discipline: they’re stated with a currency and an “as of” date, because travel prices drift and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
Corrections
We will get things wrong sometimes — opening hours change, lines get suspended, restaurants close. When you spot an error, tell us via the contact page with the page URL and what’s wrong. We check every report. Factual errors are corrected on the page itself, and if the error was significant (wrong price band, wrong safety claim, a closed venue still recommended), the fix goes in as soon as it’s verified rather than waiting for the next scheduled review.
Independence from commercial relationships
Some links on CityTown earn us a commission, as disclosed on every page that carries them and explained in full on how we make money. The editorial rule is simple: recommendations are decided first, on their merits, and monetisation is attached afterwards where a relevant offer exists. No partner pays for placement, no partner sees a page before you do, and a product being commissionable doesn’t protect it from a negative verdict. Several page types on this site — including best-time-to-visit and food guides — carry no offers at all, by design.
Questions about anything on this page go to the contact page. This policy is reviewed alongside the rest of the site and was last reviewed on 23 July 2026.