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Launching 2027  ·  Founding hotels now being selected  ·  Properties shown are illustrative

How we choose a hotel

We stay there first. The five things we check on every visit, from whether the owners are present to whether the member rate is a real number.

How we choose

How we choose a hotel

Words by Louise Holden31 May 20262 min read
Illustrative example · the real Journal begins in 2027 This article was written ahead of launch to show the kind of guide we will publish. The stay described is an example rather than a review and any Crew Portfolio properties named are fictional and not yet bookable. Public travel information such as fares and opening times was checked at the time of writing.

The shortest answer is that we stay there first. The longer answer is a list of five things we check on every visit and a rule about what happens when a hotel passes four of them.

We started Crew Portfolio because we kept finding the same kind of small hotel in different countries: too small to interest the big booking platforms, owners on site, breakfast decided that morning. We wanted somewhere to keep a list of them and only them, for people who understand the difference. So this is what we look for.

The owners are present

Not as photographs on a website: actually there, in the kitchen or on the desk when we arrive. If a hotel has been bought by a fund and re-staffed with a manager from a chain, it shows within an hour and we usually do not write it up.

The food is taken seriously

It does not need to be ambitious; it needs to be cooked. A well-timed boiled egg with bread the owner fetched at 07:00 tells us more than a tasting menu. We pay attention to what arrives at the table and to who brought it.

The rooms are restrained

Small is fine and plain is fine. What we mind: televisions that cannot be switched off, lighting designed for a photograph rather than a person and a coffee machine nobody can work. Stone, linen, a window that opens and a chair you would sit in by choice is enough.

The rate is real

We do not feature hotels where the published rate is fiction, or where the discount only exists on a Tuesday in February with a code. The Crew Portfolio member rate is a real number on a real night, agreed with the owner and held for members.

The place changes the pace of the day

This is the hardest one to write into a checklist and the easiest to detect in person: at some point in the first morning you stop checking the time. If that does not happen, we leave the hotel off, whatever else it got right.

After the visit we write up what we found. Sometimes we complete a write-up and decide not to publish, because the stay was fine, the room was fine, nothing was wrong and we still could not recommend it to a friend without a list of caveats. That hotel does not make the collection. There are many perfectly good hotels we do not feature and the collection is small on purpose.