About Desert Coast Guide

I am Diego Fresno, an independent travel writer. I run this site on my own: I choose what to cover, I pay for my own tickets and tours, and nobody pays to appear here.

Where these guides come from

The guides are built on one trip through the Gulf, 7 to 17 December 2023: Bahrain on the 11th, Dubai and Abu Dhabi over the 13th, 15th and 16th, Doha on the 17th. One circuit, not four separate holidays, which is the reason this site exists instead of a single-city blog: most people who fly this far do the same thing.

That trip is not enough on its own, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. One trip three years ago does not tell you what a museum ticket costs today or whether a mosque still requires the same booking process. So every commercial claim on this site (prices, opening hours, ticket tiers, what is included) is checked against the operator’s own website before publication, dated on the page. Where I have not been somewhere myself, the page says so.

How this site makes money

Affiliate links. If you book a tour or activity through a Viator link on this site, I earn a commission and you pay exactly the same price. That is the model for now. GetYourGuide and Booking.com links will be added once those programs approve this domain, on the same terms.

The thing worth knowing is what that does not buy. Operators cannot pay to be recommended, cannot pay to rank higher, and cannot pay to have a bad review removed. When a widely sold tour is poor value, this site says so, even when it is one that would otherwise earn a commission.

Getting in touch

If something here is out of date or wrong, tell me and I will fix it: hola@desertcoastguide.com. Corrections are welcome and they get made.