A magazine about staying somewhere beautiful

What we do

Three things, carefully. The Wire is our news desk: most days it files a short, factual dispatch on the world of high-end stays — a hotel or resort opening, a remarkable property arriving on the rental market, a design award, a rule change that affects where you can stay. We read the trade wires and the press releases so you get the two minutes that matter, with the source named and linked.

The Collection is the part you can book. It is a small, deliberately short list of houses, villas and inns we have come to know and would send a friend to — from a Copacabana rooftop to a house under the red rocks of Sedona. We describe each one plainly, say who it suits and who it does not, and send you straight to the property's own site or listing to book. We take no commission on bookings.

The guides are the third. Most travel writing is either a list of hotels or a wall of adjectives; we wanted the thing in between — a real guide to a place, written around the decision that actually shapes a trip: where you sleep. Which town to base in, what you are really paying for, when to go, how to arrive. The answers are specific, and they are checked. We say plainly when something is uncertain rather than dressing a guess up as a fact.

How we write

Plainly. We do not call anywhere a hidden gem or a jewel, we do not tell you a place is a feast for the senses, and we try never to waste your time. A good guide should read like a well-traveled friend telling you what they actually know, including the parts that are inconvenient — the stairs, the wind, the crowds, the day the cable car is closed.

Choose the place, then choose where in it to sleep. Get those two right and most of the rest of a trip takes care of itself.

How we make money

Amorielli is a magazine, not a booking service. We take no reservations and handle no payments. One relationship you should know about: Amorielli's publisher also works with some of the houses we write about, on their marketing. Every story about one of those houses carries a note saying so, and the facts in it come from the property, its listing and its guests' published reviews, quoted as written. If we ever run a paid partnership, it will be labelled as one on the page.

How we check facts

Every specific in a feature or a guide, a date, a distance, a flight, a rule, comes from a source the writer read, and each story lists its sources at the end. Guest reviews are quoted word for word. A story on The Wire is written only from a source page the desk has read and kept; when no page can be read, there is no story that day. Before it publishes, every specific in it (a named person, company or place, a case, a study, a quotation, a figure, a date) is listed and checked against that material by a mechanical check, not a model's say-so. A specific the material lacks is looked up in public sources: one a source confirms stays, one a source corrects is rewritten to what the source says and the source is added to the story, and one no source confirms is removed, sentence by sentence. The note at the foot of each story prints the real counts. A story that involves a death, an injury, a lawsuit, an arrest, fraud, a named private person or an attributed quotation is held and read by the publisher's legal desk before it appears. We leave prices out, because they change. Every Wire story ends with a "Report an error" link; a report opens a matter on the legal desk the same day, is answered within two business days, and a correction is made in the text and recorded on the corrections page.

Guides for owners

Hosting is our section for owners of villas, beach houses and apartments who welcome guests: the guest bedroom, the light, the kitchen, the first hour, families, safety and photographs, with examples from the houses in the Collection.

The imagery

The Collection shows each property in its own photographs, supplied by the house — real rooms, real views, the place as it actually is. Destination guides use real photographs of the places we write about, drawn largely from Wikimedia Commons and used under their licenses, with credit on each image. News dispatches are different: rather than pretend to have a photographer at every opening, The Wire runs atmospheric studio illustrations from our own image library — and we never present a generated image as a photograph of a specific, named property.

The picture desk is run by Elio Marchetti, our illustrations director. He draws the covers and the studio illustrations, keeps the register of who made each photograph and under what licence, and runs a standing audit of the whole site that checks every page for broken, hotlinked, uncredited or repeated pictures. Now and then he writes The Sketchbook, a short column about one drawing and the place behind it. The audit's latest result is published on the compliance page.

Say hello

Spotted something out of date, or want us to cover a place you love? We read everything. Write to us at info@amorielli.com, call (332) 291-9055, or join the newsletter for a new destination now and then. Our address is 224 West 35th Street, Suite 500, New York, NY 10001.