Editorial Policy
Corrections policy, affiliate disclosure, photo policy, and the standards we hold ourselves to.
Hot Springs Guide operates under a transparent editorial policy. This page documents how corrections are handled, how affiliate relationships are disclosed, how the photos on each guide are produced, and the editorial independence we hold from the operators listed on the site.
How to flag a correction
Send corrections to corrections@hotspringsguide.com or to the general contact address at hello@hotspringsguide.com. Include the URL of the page you are correcting, the specific claim you believe is wrong, and the source for the correct information. We typically respond within five business days.
When we make a substantive correction, we update the affected page, refresh the status verification date in the hero, and note the correction in our internal change log. We do not maintain a public errata page because the page itself is the canonical record of what we currently believe to be true.
Minor stylistic edits and small wording adjustments are made without notation. Substantive factual corrections (pricing, hours, reservation policy, ownership, pool count, source spring temperature) are tracked internally and we are happy to share the change history with anyone who asks.
How we make money
Hot Springs Guide is funded through affiliate commissions on hotel bookings (Booking.com via Awin, Expedia Group), experience bookings (Viator, GetYourGuide), and direct relationships with hot springs operators where applicable. When you click an outbound booking link on this site and complete a booking, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This relationship does not affect our editorial coverage.
We do not rank pages by affiliate commission rate. Pages are organized by reader demand, editorial value, and geographic balance. A page on a free wild USFS hot springs sits alongside a page on an all-inclusive luxury resort because both serve real visitor questions, not because one pays better.
Affiliate links carry tracking parameters (for example, ?ref=hotspringsguide-glenwood-direct on a direct operator link) so we can measure click-through and conversion. These parameters do not change pricing, do not collect personal data, and are visible in the URL of every outbound link.
How the imagery on each guide is produced
The visuals on every guide are editorial composites grounded in operator-supplied reference photos and licensed source media of each specific hot springs. We chose this approach because it serves the reader better than the alternatives. A travel guide that relies on visitor uploads runs into a real problem: the available photographs of a given hot springs are often dim, badly cropped, taken in the wrong season for what the page is about, or include personal images of other visitors. Operator marketing photos are usually high-quality but licensing them at scale would cost more than the site is worth at this stage. Composite imagery grounded in licensed reference photography lets every guide share the same visual standard and lets us cover remote, seasonal, or restricted hot springs that visitors do not photograph well.
In practice: the visual identity matches the real hot springs (geometry, surrounding rock and vegetation, scale, lighting, mineral character) because the reference set is real photography of that location. Where operator photos or Wikimedia Commons sources exist, they are linked directly in each guide's Sources block so visitors can verify exactly what the place looks like.
What operators cannot do
We accept editorial corrections from operators and welcome them; operators usually know their own pricing and hours better than we do. We do not accept editorial input on the verdict line, the worth-it-if and skip-if blocks, the compare-to-alternatives section, or the FAQ answers. Those are central editorial judgments and they are written for the reader, not the operator.
Direct relationships with operators (sponsored listings, paid partnerships) when entered into are disclosed in a dedicated section on the affected page. The default state is no direct relationship; affiliate commission on outbound booking clicks is the standard revenue model.