1. Our editorial promise
The Ryokan Guide aims to help readers understand and choose Japanese ryokans through careful, transparent editorial work. Accuracy, cultural context, and reader trust take priority over a property's or booking provider's commercial interests.
These standards apply to profiles, ratings, rankings, guides, maps, newsletters, social posts, and commercial material produced under The Ryokan Guide name. They are maintained by Vent Neuf Ltd, the Site's operator.
2. What our content labels mean
- Research-based profile or assessment: produced from documented sources, structured signals, and editorial analysis without claiming a TRG contributor stayed.
- First-hand stay: used only when an identified contributor actually stayed; the page should state when the stay occurred and who funded or hosted it.
- TRG rating or ranking: our proprietary assessment, not an official hotel classification or a simple consumer-review average.
- Ad, Advertisement, or Sponsored: content or placement supplied, funded, or materially controlled through a commercial arrangement.
- Ad — paid booking link: an outbound affiliate link that can earn TRG a commission on an eligible transaction.
“Featured” and “Editor's pick” must not be used interchangeably with “sponsored.” If a placement is paid, the visible label says so before engagement regardless of the visual style.
3. Research, selection, and sources
The current production workflow combines structured accommodation data, official property information, destination and transport sources, reputable travel and hospitality coverage, recognised awards, booking-platform information, and aggregated guest-review signals. Source usefulness varies by fact: an official timetable is preferable for transport, while recurring independent reports can help identify service consistency.
Automated rules and AI-assisted research help organise the candidate pool, find possible discrepancies, and create draft fields. They are inputs—not personal observations. Before commercial publication treats a profile as final, an accountable editor must review material claims, remove unsupported statements, and resolve material source conflicts. When reliable confirmation is unavailable, we omit the fact, qualify it, or tell readers to verify it.
Source discipline
- Prefer primary and recent sources for changeable facts.
- Keep source URLs and checked dates internally for material claims.
- Do not copy another publisher's distinctive expression or present it as our reporting.
- Separate a provider's marketing claim from an independently supported finding.
- Do not fabricate visits, quotations, credentials, awards, or source documents.
4. TRG ratings and the Top 100
Eligible properties are assessed across eight published criteria: Omotenashi, Ryori, Onsen, Wabi-Sabi, Shun, Shitsurai, Ichigo Ichie, and Consistency. Each criterion is scored on a 0–10 scale and currently contributes equally to the composite score. The composite is mapped to the proprietary 1–8 TRG Star scale; eligible properties are ordered by the composite to produce the Top 100.
The inputs can include structured source data, review patterns, researched evidence, and editorial judgement. A person may correct a source error or override an automated draft only with a recorded reason and supporting evidence. Commission eligibility, advertising spend, gifts, and willingness to work with TRG are excluded from the calculation.
Ratings are comparative editorial opinions within the assessed candidate set, not promises about an individual stay. Missing or uneven public evidence can reduce confidence. Scores and ranks may change when reliable information, methodology, or property operations change. The displayed ranking year identifies the edition; it is not a live official register.
A more accessible overview appears on How We Rate Ryokans. If a material methodology change affects comparability, we update the methodology explanation and identify the edition rather than silently presenting the old and new methods as identical.
5. How we use artificial intelligence
AI tools may assist with web research, source comparison, structured-data extraction, translation drafts, categorisation, scoring drafts, prose drafts, and image-caption drafts. AI can make factual, citation, translation, and cultural-context errors. Its output is not evidence of a stay and is not, by itself, a sufficient source.
Our commercial-publication standard requires that:
- an accountable person takes editorial responsibility for final publication;
- material facts are checked against available sources rather than trusted because an AI produced them;
- AI never invents first-hand sensory detail, a quotation, a visit, or a contributor's qualification;
- materially synthetic or manipulated documentary-style media is labelled as such;
- a correction is handled the same way whether the error began with a person, a source, or a tool.
Where content is published without substantive human editorial review, or where applicable law requires a specific AI disclosure, we label that fact at the content itself. Routine technical assistance does not transfer responsibility away from TRG.
6. Independence, gifts, and conflicts
A property may provide corrections and evidence about objective facts, but it does not receive prepublication approval or a veto over criticism, ratings, rankings, or conclusions. Editorial contributors must disclose relevant ownership, employment, family, financial, or close personal relationships and must not cover a property when the conflict cannot be managed transparently.
Free or discounted stays, meals, transport, upgrades, gifts, fees, or tourism-board support are material benefits. If accepted in connection with coverage, the precise benefit and provider are disclosed prominently on that coverage. It is not described as an anonymous or independently paid visit. Nominal hospitality does not buy favourable treatment and should be declined when it could reasonably call independence into question.
7. Affiliate links and sponsored content
Affiliate links are visibly marked “Ad — paid booking link.” A commission can support the publication but cannot determine selection, score, rank, recommendation, or the substance of coverage. The full relationship is explained in our Affiliate & Advertising Disclosure.
Sponsored material, if accepted, is labelled before engagement and separated from independent ratings. Paid placements do not enter the Top 100 or earn a TRG Star by payment. Commercial staff, partners, properties, tourism bodies, and booking services cannot suppress a correction or approve an editorial conclusion.
8. Accuracy, updates, and cultural context
Travel information is unusually changeable. We distinguish durable cultural explanation from details such as price, access, opening status, meal policy, accessibility, bathing rules, and amenities that should be checked directly before booking. Translation choices aim for meaning and context rather than false precision; Japanese terms are explained where an English equivalent loses important nuance.
We avoid stereotypes and treat ryokans as living businesses and cultural institutions, not props. Photography credits and licences should be recorded, and an image should not be presented as a current factual depiction if it is illustrative, synthetic, materially altered, or from another property or season.
9. Corrections and rating challenges
Readers, properties, and sources may report an error using our contact form. Include the page URL, disputed statement, supporting evidence, and your relationship to the subject. A property's disagreement with an editorial judgement is considered, but does not by itself establish a factual error.
Our correction process is to:
- log the request and preserve the submitted evidence;
- check the strongest available primary and independent sources;
- correct a material factual error promptly and propagate it to affected structured fields;
- add a dated note when a change materially alters meaning, a score, or a ranking;
- quietly correct spelling, formatting, and other immaterial errors;
- have a person without the relevant commercial conflict approve a disputed score change.
10. Ownership and accountability
Vent Neuf Ltd is responsible for these standards. Organisational bylines such as “The Ryokan Guide Editorial Team” describe work published under that responsibility; they do not imply unnamed contributors have credentials or first-hand experiences that have not been documented.
Questions about methodology, conflicts, corrections, or labels may be sent to our contact form. We review this policy when the scoring model, source pipeline, ownership, revenue model, or use of AI changes materially and publish a new effective date.