Where our facts come from
Every page is built from four kinds of source, and each one is trusted for different things.
| Source | What we use it for | What we don’t use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Viator listings | Tour names, duration, inclusions, meeting points, review counts and ratings, live prices and dates | Seasons, conditions, anything the operator can’t control |
| Official sites | Park rules, ferry and train timetables, marine forecasts, opening days, event dates | Opinions about which tour is better |
| Traveller videos on YouTube | How a day really runs, what people packed or forgot, what went wrong | Prices, which change, and anything said in a paid segment as if it were a review |
| Search data | Which questions people ask, so the page answers them | Nothing that appears as a fact on the page |
Where two sources disagree, we say so on the page and give both. A cruise listing might say three hours while a traveller timed two and a half from boarding to the wharf. Both are useful, and neither cancels the other.
Prices never appear in our copy. They show on the tour cards, pulled live from Viator, because a price written into a sentence goes stale within weeks.
How traveller videos and reviews are used
Much of the practical detail on our pages comes from people who filmed their own trip and put it on YouTube. We watch the video, read its transcript, and take the parts that help someone plan: the queue at the wharf, the steep stairs at Wentworth Falls, the jacket they wished they’d brought.
A few rules apply every time.
- The channel is named in the sentence that uses its detail, and the video is linked there.
- Counts are counts. If four of five videos mention seasickness on the way out of the Heads, the page says four of five.
- Sponsored videos are labelled next to the claim, with the sponsor’s name.
- Operator and brand channels are labelled as such. We use them to describe routes and formats, never as reviews.
- We don’t copy video frames onto our pages, and we don’t reuse anyone’s photos.
- Anything a video states as fact, like a start time or a season, goes on our check list before it’s published.
Viator reviews are used for their numbers: how many, and the average rating. We don’t quote individual reviewers by name on our pages. A review describes one day, and the count across hundreds of days says more.
How the site is paid
SydneySide Tours is a member of the Viator affiliate program. When you click a tour on this site and book it on Viator, Viator pays us a commission on that booking.
You pay the same price you’d pay going to Viator directly. The commission comes out of Viator’s share, not yours, and it’s never added to your total.
That’s the only money the site makes. Specifically:
- Operators don’t pay us to be listed, ranked or reviewed.
- We don’t accept free trips, discounts or gifts from operators.
- We don’t run display adverts.
- No page carries a sponsored placement.
The commission rate doesn’t vary by tour, so we earn the same share on a cheap walk as on a private charter. That matters, because it means the order of a page has no reason to lean toward the dearer trip.
Every link to Viator on the site is marked in the code as sponsored, the label Google asks sites to use for paid links. Each tour page also carries a one-line note about the commission at its foot, near the booking links, so nobody has to come here to find out.
What we will never claim
Some things look good on a tour site and aren’t true. We won’t write them.
- That we took a trip, saw a whale or stood on a lookout. We write “we compared” and “we watched”, which is what we did.
- That a tour is “the best” without saying best for what, and on what evidence.
- A count of happy customers, bookings or years in business we can’t show you.
- A review, quote or testimonial from a person who doesn’t exist.
- That a trip is nearly sold out, or that a price ends at midnight. Where something genuinely books up, like whale season weekends, we name the weeks and the reason.
- A guarantee an operator doesn’t make. If a cruise offers a free second trip when no whales show, the page says what the listing says and nothing more.
We also leave out the words that fill most travel copy. You won’t find a page here telling you a view will take your breath away. We’d rather tell you which side of the boat to sit on.
How pages are produced and kept current
Each page starts as a research file: the Viator listings for that kind of trip, the search questions people ask about it, and notes from every usable traveller video. The page is drafted from that file with the help of AI writing tools, then checked line by line against the same file before it goes live. A sentence that can’t be traced back to a source comes out.
Facts that change, like season dates, start times and ferry routes, are checked against the official source before publishing and again at each quarterly recheck. The date at the foot of every tour page shows when that last happened.
Mistakes still get through. When we find one, or someone tells us, we fix the page and log it on the corrections page with the date and what changed. If you have a question about this policy, contact us. For who stands behind the site, read about the publisher.