About Passport Newsletter
Unbiased. Unusual. Unswayed by advertisers.
Passport Newsletter is the oldest and most respected luxury travel newsletter in America.
If you’re a discerning traveler, or travel advisor, it is also your very best value.
How so? Every issue is written and edited by a smart collection of top-level journalists and writers, who live in-country and give you a view that no mere magazine, guidebook or travel website will ever duplicate.
Our unparalled access comes from being part of the community, not just passing through it with a camera crew in tow. It matters.
Why? Because ...
- a slick travel magazine may feature Rome from the vantage point of a supermodel in a gossamer gown riding a Vespa through the rain. Does that sound like you?
- A guidebook may urge you to bypass memorable culinary opportunities to brown-bag your meal in a tourist-trap part of town. Is that why you’ve traveled to Paris or Tokyo?
- Online hotel and restaurant “reviews” are often written by those who lack the life experience or sophistication to discern what an expert would notice immediately. Many big-name websites feature comments from these unvetted volunteers, simply because their “reviews” are free. (We learned a long time ago, you get what you pay for.)
That’s why Passport Newsletter readers get so much more.
As a Passport Newsletter subscriber, you are far more likely to prefer quality travel experiences. Of course, you're nobody’s fool so you resist ridiculous, inflated prices for hotels and restaurants that don’t merit it.
That’s why we focus on high-end hotels with rates that don’t insult their guests; superb dining experiences only local residents know; shopping reviews that point you toward treasures with meaning rather than mass-produced souvenirs; and advice about navigating well traveled sites while avoiding tourist crowds.
Indeed, Passport Newsletter can save you days of research and hundreds or even thousands of dollars by providing on-the-ground intelligence that lets you make smart, insider-caliber choices that fit your way of life.
We can do it because our reviewers are experts with personality, taste, and wit. They don’t review by checking off boxes on a form; they breathe in the atmosphere, stay in the hotel as a regular guest, and reflect on the relationship between what they’ve spent on dinner, or a room, or an event — and how they feel about it afterward.
Traveling this way, our reviewers can remain fully anonymous yet fully engaged, which is the best way to get an objective review.
Why we’re so different. In our 45 years, Passport Newsletter has neither sought nor accepted advertising from the hotels we review. Or anyone else.
Other travel publications and websites may claim to be your objective representative, but they are also the direct recipients of millions of dollars in hotel advertising. And as the economy gets tighter, they need to do whatever they can to keep those advertisers happy.
You do the math.
We think it adds up to this: Passport Newsletter offers tremendous authentic value at a remarkable cost.
Our global network that brings you original, uncompromised reviews at a fraction of what it would cost others to match. That’s the benefit of an organization with nearly half a century under its belt.
And, we back your subscription up with a 100%, 60-day, unconditional, no-risk, no-questions-asked, iron-clad guarantee.
Plus complete access to our library of thousands of travel reports.
