How We Research Our Guides

Cruise Talk publishes practical guides about cruise planning and cruise costs. This page explains where our information comes from, how we keep it current and how the site is paid for.

Where the facts come from

Every guide is built from primary sources: the cruise lines’ own fare, gratuity and policy pages, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the State Department and the CDC Vessel Sanitation Program. We link to them in the text so you can check the source yourself. Where a figure varies by season, model year, region or provider, we give a typical range with the year and explain what moves it, instead of printing one precise number we cannot back up.

Prices, gratuities and package rules change often. Every rate we quote carries the year, and where lines differ we show them side by side rather than picking one.

What we do not do

We do not describe sailings as if we had been on them, and we do not publish reviews of ships based on a press trip. We do not invent statistics, surveys, quotes or experts. When the honest answer is “it depends” or “you do not need that”, that is the answer we give.

How the guides are written

Guides are researched and drafted with the help of AI tools, then checked claim by claim against the sources linked in each guide before they are published. Articles that turn out to be wrong or out of date are corrected, not quietly deleted.

Updates and corrections

Each guide shows the date it was last updated. We review guides when rules, prices or products change, and when readers point out a problem. If you spot an error, write to hello@cruise-talk.com and tell us which page and what is wrong. We fix confirmed errors and change the update date.

Independence and advertising

The site is paid for by advertising. We do not sell cruises or take bookings, and no cruise line pays to appear in a guide. Advertisers have no say in what we write, and ads are always visibly separate from the guides.