What we publish, what we don't.

What gets approved

• Real trips you took.Doesn't need to be recent — a trip you took five years ago that you still remember well beats a hypothetical one.
• Specific place names.The name of the restaurant, the neighborhood, the museum, the beach. Not “a good local spot” — that's the tell for trip content nobody actually took.
• Honest notes about trade-offs. The tour was good but overpriced. The hotel is in the perfect neighborhood but noisy on weekends. The train is faster than the bus but the bus goes through the mountain pass. This is what makes a reader itinerary useful.
• A workable day-by-day. Real trips have realistic days — three to five items, room to breathe, a meal or two named. Twelve stops in one day reads like a list, not a plan.
• Your own byline. Sign it. First name only is fine. We snapshot the byline at publish time so it stays with the trip.

What we reject

• AI-generated first drafts you didn't edit. You can absolutely start with our AI planner and refine it — that's the whole point of the fork button. But the published version needs your real judgment on it.
• Marketing copy tone.“Discover the vibrant hidden gems of this must-visit destination” is an instant reject. Write the way you'd text a friend who was going next month.
• Affiliate stuffing.Every published itinerary can link to our shared affiliate partners (Expedia, Viator, etc.). What we won't publish is a trip that's clearly built around promoting a specific hotel, tour operator, or brand.
• Trips you can't verify.A one-day “plan” with no place names, no notes, and no personal detail reads as filler even if it wasn't. Add substance or don't publish it.
• Anything targeting a private person. The owner of the guesthouse, your travel companion, a stranger you had a bad interaction with — leave individuals out of the published version.

How moderation works

When you hit Publish on your trip in /trips, a moderation pass runs before the page goes live. Most trips that meet the bar above ship instantly. Trips that hit soft-flag criteria (thin content, uncertain tone, too much affiliate language) sit in a manual review queue for a day or two.

If we reject a trip, we tell you why — the moderation note is returned to you and shown on your workspace. You can edit and resubmit as many times as you want.

Once published, your trip gets a permanent URL under /community/itineraries/<slug>. If you unpublish later, the slug stays reserved so any links back to it don't rot silently — visitors see a “this itinerary is no longer published” message instead of a 404.

Editing after publish

You can edit your published itinerary any time from /trips. Edits go through a lighter re-moderation pass — only re-triggered if you meaningfully change the content. Every edit updates the “last updated” timestamp on the public page so readers know they're looking at a fresh version.