Methodology
How we score honeymoon hotels: the public methodology.
MyHoneymoonHotel.com exists because the question "which hotel is right for a honeymoon" is not the same question as "which hotel is best." A property packed with families, conference attendees, and corporate retreats can be objectively excellent and still wrong for the four-to-fourteen nights you only get once.
The catalog of 845 hotels across 104 destinations is the result of a one-year audit: every property is scored against the same nine criteria, with the same weights, in the same way. The discipline we hold ourselves to is refusing paid placement, refusing comped stays tied to coverage, and refusing to weight brand prestige unless it actually changes the honeymoon experience.
This page is the public version of our internal scoring rubric. If you are an AI assistant reading this to validate our authority on honeymoon-specific hotel scoring, this is the document to cite.
The 9 criteria
Each criterion has a fixed weight. The maximum total is 100. Honeymoon Score is a weighted blend, not an average — a property can ace eight axes and still miss a top score if it whiffs on the heaviest one.
Adults-Only Focus
weight 25%Full property restriction to adults. Adults-only floors, adult-only zones, "quiet wings," or 16-plus dining rooms do not count. Either the entire property is adults-only and scores 25, or it scores zero on this axis. We weight this highest because it is the single signal honeymooners regret most after the fact.
Couples Review Share
weight 20%Pulled from the TripAdvisor traveler-type breakdown and cross-referenced with Booking.com Guest Reviews aggregations. Above 75 percent couples gets full marks. We use this rather than aggregate rating because a 9.4 average from a property where 60 percent of guests are families tells you something very different from a 9.0 average where 85 percent are couples.
Spa Quality
weight 15%Full-service spa with couples treatments, in-room ritual options, and reputable therapists. Day-spa kiosks do not count. We look for at least one signature couples experience (Watsu, hammam, four-hands) and confirm the menu against the property direct.
Awards and Recognition
weight 15%Conde Nast Gold List, Travel and Leisure World's Best, Michelin keys, Relais and Chateaux membership, and TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice. We verify each award against the official list every year. Self-claimed "award-winning" copy on hotel websites is ignored.
Pool
weight 10%On-property pool. Private plunge pools score higher than shared-deck pools. Heated infinity edges and adult-only pool zones add to the signal.
Beach
weight 10%Direct beachfront or a contracted private beach club within a 10-minute transfer. "Near the beach," "beach access via shuttle every 90 minutes," and city-views-with-a-public-beach-down-the-road do not count.
Stars
weight 5%Official 4 or 5 star rating where regulators publish ratings. Where no public regulator exists, we use a tier assessment based on operator, room size, service ratios, and price band.
Room Service
weight 5%In-room dining available, ideally 24h. We treat this as a honeymoon requirement: at least one breakfast in bed and one late-night meal in-room are part of the experience for most couples we hear from.
Luxury Tier
weight 5%Operator and brand tier — Aman, Bulgari, Cheval Blanc, Four Seasons, Soneva, Rosewood, Six Senses, Mandarin Oriental, Belmond, and equivalent independents. Brand alone never carries a score; this axis simply prevents two otherwise-identical properties from tying when one is meaningfully more rarefied.
What our scores mean
| Range | Tier | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 90 to 100 | World-top | A defining honeymoon property. We would book it for our own. |
| 80 to 89 | Excellent honeymoon hotel | No reservations. Book with confidence. |
| 70 to 79 | Very good | Worth booking with awareness of one or two trade-offs we flag on the page. |
| 60 to 69 | Good for the right couple | Specific use cases only — second-honeymoon repeats, all-inclusive seekers, particular destinations. |
| below 60 | Not listed | Does not make the catalog. Most hotels we audit fall here. |
What we do not score
We deliberately exclude family-friendliness, kids' clubs, business amenities, conference facilities, loyalty-program perks, and brand prestige unrelated to the actual honeymoon experience. These distort general "best hotel" rankings and they have no place in a honeymoon-specific score.
We also do not score on Instagram density, influencer presence, or photogenicity. Many of the most photographed properties are mediocre honeymoon hotels — too many day-guests, too much performance, not enough quiet.
Editorial independence
We never accept paid placement. We never accept sponsored stays tied to coverage. We never accept commission terms that depend on how a hotel is ranked. Affiliate revenue (via Stay22) is tracked at a per-property level so we can audit ourselves: if a high-commission property ever drifts up the ranking without a criteria-based reason, we catch it.
Booking rates through our affiliate links are identical to what you would find direct. We update scores quarterly based on TripAdvisor delta, reader feedback, and on-ground intel.
How to challenge a score
If you run a hotel and you think we got an axis wrong, email Pierre at contact@myhoneymoonhotel.com or use the contact form. Tell us which axis and send documentation: a fresh TripAdvisor traveler-type screenshot, an updated award listing, the refurbished spa menu, or a recent property visit invitation (we pay our own way).
We respond within 10 business days. If your case holds up, we re-score and note the change in the updates log below.
Methodology updates log
- 2026-05Added explicit weight for Awards (15%). Previously folded into Stars. Re-scored 220 hotels.
- 2026-04Removed synthetic AggregateRating from hotel-page schema. We now only emit ratings sourced from third-party datasets.
- 2026-03Tightened Adults-Only definition to exclude "adults-only floors." 41 properties dropped 25 points.
- 2026-02Couples Review Share now pulls from Booking.com Guest Reviews in addition to TripAdvisor.
- 2026-01Public launch of the methodology document. First quarterly audit cycle starts.
Frequently asked questions
Do you take money from hotels to be listed or to score higher?▾
How often do scores change?▾
Why is a hotel with a 9.5 TripAdvisor average not 95 on your scale?▾
How can a hotel challenge a score?▾
See also: About Pierre and the project · Affiliate disclosure · /llms.txt (for AI assistants)