Editorial Standards
How Suroy.ph is made, who makes it, and what you are entitled to expect.
Every page on this site makes the same claim underneath whatever else it says: somebody actually went.
That claim is the whole product, and it is expensive in a way you can see. It decides which guides we are allowed to publish, how long a piece sits before it runs, and what we have to leave out when we could not check it. What follows is how we keep it true, and what happens when we get it wrong.
Two kinds of page, and how to tell them apart
Suroy.ph publishes in two lanes. They look related because they share a design. They are held to different promises, and you can tell which one you are in from the byline at the top.
Field
Guides, destinations, routes, food, culture. These are written from a visit that actually happened. Every photograph is our own. Every price, fee, schedule and route is verified before it is written and carries the date it was checked. Where a place has a coordinate, we publish it.
Field pages do not cite other travel sites, and that raises our standard rather than lowering it. When we write that boot rental is twenty pesos, there is nobody else to blame for the number. If we could not verify something, the page says so in plain words, because “the 2026 dates have not been published yet” is more useful to you than a confident guess.
Desk
News: what is changing in Philippine travel right now. Desk reports are reported, not experienced. They name their sources, they date every fact, and they carry a named human editor.
A Desk report never implies we were there. Where one carries our photography, the frame is captioned with what it is and when it was shot, and it never stands in for attendance at an event we did not attend.
We never blend the two on one page. A guide does not borrow a wire story’s authority. A news report does not borrow a guide’s presence. When a subject needs both, we report it on the Desk and link to the guide that was actually walked.
Who writes this, and who answers for it
| Field | Desk | |
|---|---|---|
| Byline | Suroy.ph | Suroy Newsdesk |
| Editor of record | Suroy.ph | Janette Arceo |
| Photography | Our own, always | Ours or credited, always |
Our bylines carry the masthead rather than a personal name, because Suroy.ph is a publication and not one person’s hobby. Accountability does not disappear into that. It moves to the editor, who is named, findable, and answers for what is published.
Every name on this masthead belongs to a real person you can find, with an archive and a bio behind it. Nobody here is a generated persona.
Photography
Every photograph in a Field guide is ours, shot on the trip the guide describes. If we have not photographed a place, we do not publish a guide to it, and that single rule decides more about what appears on this site than any other.
Every image carries a credit line with the date the photograph was taken, not the date the article ran. Where an image is not ours, the credit names its source and its licence.
We colour grade. We do not composite. Skies stay where they were, nothing is added or removed, and two locations are never merged into one frame. What you are looking at was in front of the lens.
Where a frame is older than the article it illustrates, the credit says so, and where the age of the frame changes what you should take from it, the article says so too.
Facts, and how long they last
Travel information decays. Fares change, trails close, fees go up between the visit and the reader.
- Every fee, schedule, route, fare and opening status is verified before publication.
- Every fact that can decay carries the date we checked it.
- Anything we could not verify is cut, or written plainly as unknown.
- Where two credible figures conflict and the difference matters, we publish the range and say it is a range. Confidence is not the same as precision.
- Where the pages currently ranking on a subject are wrong, we correct the record where the fact lives, on our own authority, in a form you can check.
A date stamp on this site is a statement about our own work. It means a person confirmed that figure on that day. It is not a citation and it is not decoration.
Politics
Philippine travel runs on government decisions. Fees are set by ordinance. Islands close and reopen by executive order. Protected status is legislated, festival dates are proclaimed, and transport routes are franchised. We report all of it, including when it is contested, because a traveller who does not know an island is closed has been failed by us.
What we do not do is take a side. We do not endorse candidates or parties, we do not campaign, and we do not run political opinion dressed as travel writing.
The line is between reporting a decision and arguing for one. A new entrance fee, who set it, when it starts and what it costs you is reporting. Whether the official behind it deserves your vote is not our business.
And a limit on that limit, because “we avoid politics” is exactly the sort of principle that gets borrowed as an excuse. We do not drop a story because it embarrasses someone, inconveniences a tourism office, or costs us access. A story gets held for one reason, which is that we could not stand it up.
Corrections
We correct things in the open. A quiet edit that makes a mistake disappear is worse than the mistake, because it means the record cannot be trusted either.
When we get something wrong:
- The correction is made on the page where the error was, not somewhere else.
- Anything that changes the meaning of a page carries a dated correction note on that page.
- Typographical fixes and formatting changes are made without a note.
- The article’s modified date is updated.
If you find an error, tell us. Prices you paid that differ from ours, a trail that has closed, an operator that has changed hands, a fee we have out of date. Reader corrections are the fastest quality control this site has, and they are read by a person.
Write to editor@suroy.ph.
Money, and what it cannot buy
Three commercial relationships exist here and all three are worth stating plainly.
Suroy Wear. Suroy.ph is published by the same people behind Suroy Wear, and some articles link to that store. Those links are ours. No third party is paying for them.
Hosted stays. We accept them: comped rooms, meals and tours. Accepting one never guarantees coverage and never guarantees a good write-up, and any article that came out of one says so at the top of that article, not in a footnote at the bottom.
Paid placement. We sell it but the rules are fixed, and they exist because the only thing this site actually sells is being believed.
- Anything paid is labelled paid, on the page, above the content, in plain language. Not “partner”, not “featured”, not a symbol at the foot of the page.
- Paid placement never appears in the Field or Desk lanes. A guide and a news report are not for sale at any price.
- Money does not buy a position in a ranking, a list or a recommendation, and it does not buy a better verdict.
- A paid page is fact checked like everything else. If the fee went up, we write that the fee went up.
- We will say no. Payment does not oblige us to publish, and it has never bought a change to something we had already written.
A recommendation here means we would send a friend. That is the only thing it means, and it is the one thing not for sale.
Contact
Corrections and factual queries: editor@suroy.ph
News tips, editorial and everything else: news@suroy.ph
Last updated: 2 September 2026.