Rack Rate covers luxury travel and hospitality with more scepticism than the field usually gets.
Most writing about high-end hotels is either a press trip in disguise or a list. This site is neither. We’re interested in how these places actually work — the economics behind a room rate, why a property that photographs beautifully can feel hollow to stay in, what separates an operator with a point of view from one following a brand standard. Design, food, service, ownership, and money all sit inside the same story, and we treat them that way.
Who writes it
Helena Marsh has spent twelve years writing about hospitality, with work in The Meridian Review, Continental Quarterly, and Passage. She spent four of those years on the other side, in operations at a small group in the Alto Douro, which is where most of her opinions about turndown service come from. Based in Lisbon, usually somewhere else.
Tobias Renn writes the property assessments. Former line cook, reformed. He is the reason this site pays attention to breakfast.
Ada Kwarteng covers ownership, financing, and the parts of the industry that happen in spreadsheets rather than lobbies.
What you’ll find here
- Reported features on the forces shaping the industry, from ownership structures to labour to the slow death of the resort model
- Property assessments written after paying, or with the arrangement disclosed at the top
- Conversations with the people who run these places, cook in them, and design them
Our position on hosted stays
We accept press stays only when we can say so plainly and only when there are no conditions attached to what we publish. Any piece involving a hosted stay, comped meal, or paid partnership carries a note saying so before the first paragraph. We don’t run affiliate links. We don’t send drafts to subjects for approval.
If that sounds like a low bar, it is. It is also not the industry norm.
Get in touch
Pitches, corrections, and disagreements: editor@rackrate.example Press and partnerships: press@rackrate.example
Corrections are published, not quietly edited.
Rack Rate has been publishing since 2019.