Why there is no search box

The choice we made

You cannot search this site for a hotel. There is no map with two hundred pins on it, no filter for star rating, no sort by price ascending.

That is not a feature we have not built yet. It is the decision the whole thing rests on.

Why not

An open search returns everything, which means it takes no position at all. The work of judging is handed back to you, and you do it with less information than the people who built the list.

Two hundred results is not two hundred options. It is one long afternoon and a decision made on tiredness.

So OVRS picks. Every stay on this site was chosen by somebody who would be answerable for it. The list is short because choosing is the part that takes time.

What the live data is for

Photographs, price and availability come in live, so what you read is current rather than what was true when somebody last updated a page.

It supplies those things only for the places already chosen. The feed keeps the details honest; it does not get a vote on what appears.

What we earn

OVRS takes a commission on bookings made through the collective.

Curation and commission together are worth stating plainly, because the obvious worry is that we recommend whatever pays best. The answer is the short list itself: a list of one residence, described in full including what it does not have, is not what somebody chasing volume would publish.

Judge it on what is written rather than on the promise. That is the only way it is worth anything.