An independent travel publication with a simple rule: rank on what residents say, show the receipts, and name the catch.
Known by Locals is an independent, reader-supported travel guide. We are not a hotel chain, a tour operator or a booking platform. We publish city and country guides that answer one question: where do the people who live there actually go, and what would they warn a friend about?
Our editorial team researches each city from public data: guest reviews (weighted toward those written in the local language and by long-term residents), local forums and community groups, municipal and tourism-board sources, and price samples pulled on real dates. We use AI tools to draft first summaries of that material and to run sentiment passes over thousands of reviews. Every draft is then checked by a human editor against the sources, and every place recommendation is checked by a contributor who lives in that city before it is published. Nothing goes live on a model's word alone. Our full process, source hierarchy and corrections policy are in the editorial standards.
Contributors are named, real people. We do not publish under invented personas, we do not use AI-generated portraits, and we do not claim first-hand stays we have not had. Where a contributor has stayed somewhere, the guide says so; where a recommendation rests on review data and local sources, the guide says that instead.
Known by Locals is published by Martin Ebongue, who built the research pipeline behind the site and runs the editorial team. Martin is not a licensed travel agent and this site does not sell travel; see the disclaimer.
Some links on this site are affiliate links, mainly for hotels, tours, travel insurance and eSIMs. If you book through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliates never influence what we rank or how we rank it: a hotel with no affiliate programme is listed exactly like one with a generous one. Pages may also carry display advertising. Read the disclosure section for the specifics.