How we check every place

What we check

For every place we answer five questions:

1. How many does it really sleep? The owner’s maximum, from their own listing or a booking site. When a sofa bed or an add-on cottage is needed to reach that number, we say so.
2. Bedrooms and bathrooms. We show guests per bathroom, because that’s the number that decides whether a big group’s weekend works.
3. Who’s welcome? Every place carries a party stamp: Hens & stags welcome, Celebrations OK or Quiet groups only, taken from the owner’s own house rules. Until we have a source for it, the stamp says ask the owner. We never guess.
4. What does it cost per person? We take the starting price we saw, divide by the nights it covers and the number of beds, and show it with the date we saw it. It assumes the place is full; weekends, summer and Christmas cost more.
5. What kind of stay is it? Every place is colour-coded: green for whole homes, yellow for lodges and cabins, coral for castles and estates, blue for guesthouses and hostels you hire whole. A finer label on each card says exactly what it is: a cottage, a manor house, a glamping village, a hostel.

Dates and changes

Every listing shows the date we last checked it and links to its source. Owners change their rules and prices, so if you find something has changed, please tell us.

What we leave out

We don’t count a house as a group stay because two cottages a mile apart can be booked together. Every place here is one site you can take over. Places that sleep fewer than eight aren’t listed.

Photos

We only use photos with the owner’s permission. Where we don’t have one yet, the card shows how many it sleeps instead of a stock photo pretending to be the real thing. County photos come from Ireland’s Content Pool and are credited.

Money

Links to Booking.com go through our affiliate partner, Stay22, and may earn us a small commission. Owners can list for free. Neither changes whether a place is listed, how it’s labelled, or the order it appears in.