Our method, in the open
How we find and verify opening dates
Booking platforms rarely publish the one fact this site is built on: the day a hotel actually opened. We assemble that date from public sources, ask the hotel to confirm it, and show how sure we are — including when the honest answer is a year and nothing more.
Last revised 30 July 2026 · applies to all 205 destinations
What we track
Two dates per hotel, and nothing else that ages: the day it opened, and the last time it was renovated. Everything else follows from those two — the ranking, the badges, the filters, the monthly roundups.
An opening date is the day the first paying guest could check in — not the press launch, not the topping-out ceremony, not the day the website went online. Where a hotel opened in phases, we take the first rooms that went live and say so on the hotel page.
We cover 205 destinations in Europe. We don't track prices, availability or guest opinion: other sites do that well, and those change hourly while an opening date never changes at all.
How a date gets here
Four steps, in this order. A date only moves up a confidence level when the next step actually confirms it.
We read public sources
Hotel websites, chain newsrooms, public venue directories, open data from OpenStreetMap and Wikidata. Only openly accessible pages, never anything behind a login — and every candidate date keeps the source it came from.
We cross-check
A single mention is a lead, not a date. Two independent sources that agree carry a date to verified; one strong source on its own stays reported. Two visits to the same publisher are not two sources.
We ask the hotel
A confirmation from the hotel outranks every other source, names the hotel as the source, and carries the day the answer arrived. Hoteliers can also confirm a date themselves.
We check again
Sources are re-read continuously, and a stronger source always replaces a weaker one. Every date shows the day it was last verified, so you can judge how stale it is without asking us.
The three confidence levels
Verified
ranks firstTwo roads lead here: the hotel confirms the date to us, or two independent strong sources — the chain's newsroom and the hotel's own site, say — state the same date. The hotel page names which of the two applied.
Publicly reported
ranks secondOne strong public source states the date and nothing we can see contradicts it. Good enough to rank on; a second independent source or a reply from the hotel lifts it to verified.
Estimated
ranks lastInferred from indirect signals: listing history, an archived page, the first reviews. We publish the least precise form we can defend — usually a year — and label it an estimate. Any confirmation replaces it.
Confidence is not recency. The badge says how new a hotel is, the marker says how sure we are — a three-year-old opening can be verified, and last month's can be an estimate.
Precision, not rounding
A date is published at the precision we can defend: a day, a month, or a year. If a hotel will only confirm "spring 2026", the badge reads "Opened 2026" instead of inventing a Tuesday in April. Turning a vague answer into a precise one would look better and be worse.
Relative labels follow the same rule. Within the first twelve months a hotel may also carry "Just opened" or "New this year"; we never print a counter like "three months ago": it claims a day we often don't have, and it goes stale on a page that is cached for weeks.
Renovations are always scoped
A bare renovation year says close to nothing — new carpets and a gutted building would read the same. So every renovation carries its extent: fully renovated, rooms refreshed, public areas renewed, a soft refresh — or partial, when we know work happened but not how much.
A renovation never overwrites an opening: both dates stay on the hotel page, opening first. Renovation badges use the warmer clay tone, so a refresh is never read as a new build.
Pre-openings are forecasts
A hotel that has announced an opening but not opened it is shown as a forecast — dashed badge, no colour — and counts in no "opened within" filter. It carries no booking button, because there is nothing to book and a button would claim otherwise.
What we never do
We never call a hotel outdated, tired or unrenovated. A gap is ours, not the hotel's, and it reads as "No verified date yet" in quiet grey — never as a warning.
No countdowns, no "only two rooms left", no popups, no interstitials. Nothing here is built to make you hurry, because we hold no inventory to protect. The statistics are cookieless, so there is no consent banner either.
How we rank
Newest first, by the date itself. Where two hotels share a date, the more confident date ranks higher — verified above reported above estimated. Hotels without a date, and hotels that haven't opened, sit at the end of a list, never in the middle of one.
No hotel can pay to rank higher, to appear in a roundup, or to be featured. There is no advertising on this site, and hotels pay us nothing — confirming a date is free.
How Newly is funded
Newly Hotels is funded by affiliate commissions: when you book via links on this site, our partners may pay us a commission. This never affects the price you pay and never changes our ranking — hotels are ranked by date, not by payout.
Which partner a button points to depends on your region, on which partner actually lists the hotel, and sometimes on a test of which partner serves you better. The partner's name is on the button before you click. Commission rates differ between partners; they never touch the order hotels appear in.
Hotels that haven't opened carry no partner link at all. We take no money from hotels and sell no placements. A partner's report tells us that a booking happened for one of our click IDs and what it earned — never who you are.
Corrections
If a date here is wrong, tell us: we correct it and stamp the day we did. A confirmation from the hotel always beats anything we inferred.
Do you work at the hotel? You can confirm an opening or renovation date yourself — the self-service form for hoteliers arrives with the first published hotels.
A correction address goes live with the first published hotels; there are no hotel dates on this site yet to correct.