EDITORIAL POLICY

Last Updated: September 20, 2026

OUR MISSION

Here at The Solo Solstice, our mission is to provide honest, trustworthy travel advice to help you plan and execute a safe, realistic and affordable trip to destinations in the United States and beyond. We primarily do this by sharing detailed travel guides on the website, along with weekly curated emails from our newsletter and group discussions in our Facebook Group.

TRAVEL ADVICE ROOTED IN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

You will never find a single travel guide on The Solo Solstice that is written by AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. There are so many resources to help you plan a trip, but not all of them are created equally. I believe that travel blogs are some of the best resources because you’re able to get advice from people who have actually visited various destinations that you might be interested in traveling to.

OUR STANCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Other than occasionally using AI platforms to outline our travel guides, we DO NOT use them to write our content. Again, all of our content is written for humans, by humans.

PAYING FOR TRAVEL

As a budget travel creator, I pay for all of my trips to prove that you don’t need a lifetime savings in order to have a fun experience.

CONTENT CREATION PROCESS

Before I write a travel guide, I spend a few days (I am a full-time employee and college student, so logistically speaking, I can’t travel full-time) traveling to the destination I’m planning on covering. I’ll focus on the more touristy experiences and areas, but always try to do some of the more off-the-beaten-path things as well.

As far as coming up with content ideas, I usually stick to the same framework:

  1. A guide sharing practical travel tips for the destination
  2. A guide sharing the best neighborhoods worth exploring in the destination 
  3. A guide detailing how to get around the destination
  4. A guide telling you the best hotels in the destination
  5. A guide giving you the best things to do in the destination
  6. At least one neighborhood-specific guide
  7. A guide sharing the best museums in the destination, along with essential planning tips
  8. A general travel guide that covers everything you need to know about visiting the destination
  9. A guide detailing the best time to visit the destination
  10. A guide outlining the best day trips from the destination
  11. At least two itineraries for the destination (typically a one-day itinerary and a three-day itinerary)

That’s already a minimum of twelve guides for each destination, as you can see. I try to go into as much detail as I humanly can because I don’t want you to ever finish any of my guides feeling confused or like I didn’t share enough information.

On top of these guides, I also like to do even more destination-specific guides, such as attraction comparisons, attraction visitor guides, budget tips and more.

I usually start a blogpost by doing extensive research (in places like Reddit, Facebook Groups, Instagram, TikTok, travel blogs, YouTube, etc.) and looking at the notes I took during my trip. One travel guide generally takes about five days to create, including researching, outlining, writing, proofreading, fact-checking and creating promotional content such as emails, Pinterest visuals and TikTok videos.

I create what I like to call “destination series” for each destination I cover, with one guide going live on my website every Monday at 9:00AM CDT. Each destination series usually spans about three months. Some last longer depending on the number of posts I’m able to come up with and write.

I write all of my content in Notion, then transfer everything to WordPress, which is essentially where my website lives. I also store a copy of every blogpost in Google Docs.

CONTACT

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding any aspect of this Editorial Policy, please contact us at demarcus@thesolosolstice.com or submit a message using our contact form here.