How We Research Our Guides

I Love Ballito publishes guides to Ballito and the KZN North Coast: where to swim, where to eat, which schools there are, what is opening. People make plans from them, so here is exactly how they are put together, and what they are not.

Where the facts come from

• The source itself, first. A restaurant's own website or social page. A school's own prospectus. The estate's published rules. The ticket page for an event.
• Official bodies. The Blue Flag list from WESSA, toll fees from SANRAL, census figures from Stats SA.
• Dated local reporting, mainly the North Coast Courier, named where we rely on it.

Every fact in a guide has a source on file. If we cannot find one, we leave the fact out or say plainly that we could not confirm it.

A second check

Before a guide is published, a second reader checks it without being told where the facts came from. They look for businesses that have closed, prices that have changed and statistics that have been stretched. Their corrections go in before the guide goes live.

What our guides are not

• They are not all based on a visit. Most of the checking is done from sources, not by walking through the door. Where a guide rests on a visit or a writer's own opinion, it says so.
• "Best" means our pick, with a reason. It is a selection, not a ranking, and we say why each place is included.
• They are not for sale. Nobody pays to be in a guide. Advertising and sponsored content are labelled as such.

Dates

Each guide says when it was last checked. Restaurants close, hours change and beaches lose their lifeguards out of season, so confirm anything that matters before you travel.

How we work

We use AI tools to help with research and drafting. A person at I Love Ballito is responsible for everything we publish.

Corrections

If we have something wrong, tell us through our contact page. We fix errors as soon as we can confirm them.