Editorial Policy

One Happy Island exists to help people plan a great trip to Aruba. To do that well, our recommendations need to be honest, current, and free of influence from anyone who’d benefit from us bending the truth. This page explains the editorial policy and standards we hold ourselves to.

How we choose what to cover

We don’t list everything in Aruba. Listing everything is what booking aggregators do, and it’s not useful. We curate — meaning a place earns coverage on the site because it’s good enough that we’d genuinely recommend it to a friend, or because it’s frequently asked about and we have something honest to say about it (sometimes that “honest something” is a warning to skip it).

Properties, tours, and restaurants are added or removed based on:

• First-hand experience by the editor or a trusted local contributor
• Aggregate guest reviews across major booking platforms — we look for consistency over time, not just one or two five-star reviews
• Operator quality, safety record, and reliability — particularly for tours where these matter most
• What we hear locally from hotel staff, guides, drivers, and other people who work in Aruba’s tourism industry

How our editorial policy ranks options

Where pages list “best” options, the ordering reflects an honest answer to the question: if a friend asked me which one to book in this category, which would I name first?

That ordering is not influenced by:

• Affiliate commission rates
• Whether a property advertises with us (none do)
• Whether a property reaches out asking to be included
• PR pitches, press releases, or paid placements

It is influenced by:

• Recent guest experience and verified reviews
• Whether the place delivers what it claims to deliver
• Value for money in its price tier
• Consistency over time (a place that’s been good for years > a place that opened last week)

When categories are close, we say so. Some “best of” lists end with several options ranked roughly equally because honestly that’s the truth.

How we keep our editorial policy current

Aruba’s tourism scene moves fast — restaurants close, hotels get renovated, operators change hands, prices change. Our editorial policy is to stay current:

• Major guide pages are reviewed at least quarterly. The “last updated” date at the top of each page is real.
• Hotel rates on listings pages are pulled live from Agoda’s API, so prices reflect current availability rather than what we typed in months ago.
• Tour availability pulls live from Viator for the same reason.
• Restaurant listings are reviewed twice a year. If a restaurant closes, we remove it within a few weeks.
• Reader corrections are taken seriously. If you spot something out of date, email us and we’ll fix it.

What our editorial policy excludes

• We don’t publish sponsored “best of” lists. Some travel sites accept payment in exchange for inclusion in their rankings. We don’t.
• We don’t accept payment to write positive reviews. Ever.
• We don’t republish AI-generated content as our own work. AI tools help us with research and drafting, but every published article is written or substantially edited by a human who knows Aruba.
• We don’t use fake reviews or testimonials. Where a page quotes a review, it’s a real one from a real platform, attributed appropriately.
• We don’t fabricate prices, hours, or facts. Where we cite numbers, they’re from primary sources (operators, hotels, official tourism data). Where we estimate, we say so.

Conflicts of interest, disclosed

Full transparency on conflicts:

1. We earn affiliate commissions when readers book through links on this site. This is disclosed on every page that contains affiliate links. See our Affiliate Disclosure for details on which programs we participate in.
2. We have personal and professional relationships with people in Aruba’s tourism industry — hotel managers, tour operators, restaurant owners. This is unavoidable when you live and work on a small island. It informs what we cover but does not change our editorial policy or standards for what we recommend.

Corrections

We make mistakes. When we do, we want to know.

If you spot an error — incorrect price, outdated hours, a place that’s closed, a fact we got wrong — email hello@onehappyisland.com with the URL and what’s wrong. We’ll fix it and credit you in the page footer if you want.

For more substantial corrections (e.g., we recommended a place that has since had serious quality complaints), we update the relevant page and add an “Updated: [date]” note explaining what changed.

Contact

• General editorial: hello@onehappyisland.com
• Corrections and fact-checking: hello@onehappyisland.com
• Partnerships: hello@onehappyisland.com (subject: “Partnership”)
• Press inquiries: hello@onehappyisland.com (subject: “Press”)

---

Last updated: May 2026

We earn a small commission from affiliate links at no extra cost to you. This never affects our recommendations.