Every “top list” on the internet claims to be the best. Ours is the only kind we know how to make honestly: computed from the public record of what thousands of travellers actually said, using a method we publish in full.
1. We aggregate everything public
For each experience we collect the star rating and review volume through official partner APIs (currently Viator, which carries Tripadvisor ratings for products listed there), always attributed. We do not copy review text wholesale; we count, weight and summarise.
A few operators, often a single charter boat whose reviews sit under a parent agency rather than the vessel, don’t have enough independent reviews of their own for a fair score. Rather than fabricate a number, borrow the agency’s, or scrape one, we mark those listings “Editor’s assessment” and place them on our own editorial judgement. They never carry a computed AE Score until real, verifiable review data for that operator exists.
2. We weight for evidence
A 5.0 from 12 reviews must not beat a 4.8 from 6,000. Each source rating is adjusted with a light Bayesian shrinkage toward the category average (enough to keep tiny samples honest, not so much that it buries a genuinely excellent operator). The adjusted ratings are then combined in proportion to how much evidence each one carries, so a platform with ten times the reviews gets ten times the say. Experiences with fewer than 30 total reviews are listed as “unranked”.
We deliberately do not flatten that weighting to give each platform an equal voice. We checked whether platforms disagree systematically, and across every experience we hold the averages sit within a tenth of a star of each other. With no house bias to correct for, the larger sample is simply the better evidence, and a handful of reviews on one platform should not outvote hundreds on another.
3. We map to the AE Score
Because nearly every tour on earth scores between 4.4 and 5.0 stars, raw averages hide the difference between good and exceptional. The AE Score anchors a perfect 5.0 at 100 and charges about 35 points per star below it, so the difference is legible at a glance: 95+ Exceptional · 88+ Outstanding · 80+ Excellent · 72+ Very good.
Integrity rules
- Rankings are never for sale. Operators cannot pay to be listed, ranked, or re-ranked.
- Commissions don't touch the math. We earn the same attention from every booking link; the score is computed before any affiliate consideration.
- Scores are re-computed on a schedule. When an operator's reviews slip, so does their rank, automatically.
- Corrections are public. Found stale data? Tell us and we'll re-check the source and update the page.