How a fact gets into our portals
Whether admission, water level or alert level: every fact takes the same route. Four steps that apply to all 42 portals.
Source
We start where the answer has to be known: park authority, operator, government agency, monitoring network. Tourism boards come later, travel blogs never.
Evidence
We store every figure with its source and the day we retrieved it. Anything we cannot back up is marked as uncertain and does not appear on the page.
Publication
A page is only built when it answers a question of its own and people search for it.
Re-check
Every night, programs compare sources, water levels, alert levels and prices. Anything that has changed is flagged and only adopted after a check.
Our main sources and how often we check them
The travel and water portals at a glance.
| PORTAL | PRIMARY SOURCES | CHECK CYCLE |
|---|---|---|
| Nationalparkatlas | Parks authorities (NPS, Parks Canada, SANParks, DOC, TANAPA) | Closures daily, prices weekly |
| Welterbe-Pass | UNESCO list, operators and site authorities | Sources every 24 hours, review date per page |
| Unterwelt-Atlas | Operators and primary sources per site | Check date from the latest source fetch |
| Volcano Guide | INGV, USGS, IMO, PHIVOLCS, civil protection | Alert levels daily, webcams every 30 minutes |
| Thrillgrounds | Operators, USCG, DHV, WorkSafe NZ | Per ground on listing and revision |
| One Day Safari | SANParks, KWS, TANAPA, German Foreign Office | Tours refreshed quarterly |
| Peak by Rail | Railway operators and tourism boards | Fares with a change feed |
| Trail & Pass | Viator partner data, permits with source | Daily at 6 am |
| Where Filmed | Operator pages, OpenStreetMap | Every title re-checked |
| Back in Time Travel | UNESCO, park pages, scholarly literature | Per statement, with limits of interpretation |
| Veni Vidi Guide | Wikidata, OpenStreetMap, the site's own website | Only with a verbatim source passage |
| Two Hours Away | OSRM travel times, partner inventory | Review threshold per offer |
| Urlaubsklima heute | NOAA weather stations, 30 to 35 years | Checked against neighbouring stations |
| Therme heute | Operator pages, OpenStreetMap | Prices every January, list monthly |
| Spreefahrten Berlin | Boat operators, partner inventory | Links checked continuously |
| Hamburg Rundfahrten | Operator pages, PEGELONLINE | Tides daily, prices with a change feed |
| Rheinschifffahrten | PEGELONLINE, boat operators, OpenStreetMap | Status every 30 minutes |
| Paddelrevier | PEGELONLINE, state services, canoe associations | Water levels nightly |
| Bootsroute | Bridge tables of the waterway authorities | Clearance against the current water level |
How the portals make money
The travel portals are funded through commissions. If you book a ticket or tour via a partner link with GetYourGuide, Viator or Tiqets, you pay the same price; Rauch Media receives a share from the provider. Partner links are marked as such. Some advice sites, for example on roof repairs or house clearance, pass enquiries on to specialist firms and are paid by the firm.
Where there is an official route, it is shown alongside: the railway's own fare before the partner offer, the boat operator's ticket office next to the online booking, the park authority's fee next to the day tour. Offers without reviews are not shown.
What we do not do
We do not invent experience reports and we do not award stars to offers we have not checked. Ratings such as the pulse scale on Thrillgrounds are labelled as editorial judgement. AI-generated images are labelled as illustrations, never passed off as photos.
Reporting a mistake
If something is wrong, email kai@rauch-media.de, ideally with the page link and the source that knows better. Corrections come before anything else. More on the contact page.