Method & standards

What this site is

Most travel content tells you where to go. Almost none of it tells you what the first thirty minutes actually feel like, where the pickpockets work, or what the taxi should cost. Arrival Brief covers only that layer — the practical friction between you and a good trip.

How briefs are written

• Patterns, not incidents. We describe scams that are widely and consistently reported across traveler accounts, local police advisories, and official tourism bodies — not one-off stories.
• Dated and maintained. Every brief shows when it was last reviewed. Fares and rules change; where a number can drift, we tell you where to confirm the current one on the ground.
• Calm by policy. Tourist crime in the cities we cover is overwhelmingly non-violent. We say how likely something actually is, and we never dress a pickpocketing pattern up as danger.
• The countermove is the point. Every problem we describe comes with the specific, boring, effective response.

What we don't do

We don't publish crime news, we don't rank cities by fear, and we don't tell you to avoid places that millions of people visit happily every year. A city brief is a pair of glasses, not a warning label.

How we stay free

Arrival Brief is free to read, and some of the services we point to — airport transfers, eSIMs, travel insurance, anti-theft gear — are partner links that pay us a commission if you book or buy through them, at no extra cost to you. Two rules keep this honest: we only list a service when it matches the advice already on the page (a pre-booked transfer where a guide recommends one, insurance where a guide tells you to keep the police report for a claim), and a commission never changes what a brief recommends or how a risk is described. Partner links are marked and open in a new tab.

Corrections

If something in a brief is out of date or wrong, tell us: hello@arrivalbrief.com. Corrections ship fast.