Our team: who writes Visit Djibouti

Who are we?

Visit Djibouti is an independent publication devoted to travel and tourism in Djibouti. The site publishes documentary pages — destinations, itineraries, practical pages, culture — and not promotional articles.

That positioning comes from a simple observation: the tourist information available on the country is often abundant in images and poor in data you can rely on. Few pages state the real journey time to a site, the season in which it is workable, or the order of magnitude of an excursion. That is precisely what we set out to document.

Visit Djibouti is neither published by nor affiliated with the Djibouti National Tourism Agency. That independence is set out in detail on the editorial method page, which also explains how our commercial links are flagged.

How is the editorial team organised?

The team works with three roles, and every piece of content goes through all three.

Editorial direction sets the editorial line, decides the order of subjects and settles contentious cases: a doubtful figure, an unsourceable claim, content drifting towards promotion. It is this role that decides not to publish.

Field reporting documents the sites: real access, observed journey times, condition of the tracks, workable seasons, price ranges. It is the role that produces the site’s raw material, and the one that takes the most time.

Source verification checks every quantified claim before publication, setting the records against Djiboutian institutional publications. Data that cannot be tied to any source is either removed or rephrased qualitatively.

How is content signed?

Every page carries a signature. To date, that signature is collective: “The Visit Djibouti editorial team”.

That choice deserves an explanation, because a collective signature is often a way of concealing the absence of editorial responsibility. That is not the case here: no external contributor is yet publicly identified, and we prefer to own that rather than invent an author’s name. The collective signature means the content commits the whole team and has gone through the same verification process.

When contributors are named, they will be identified with their field of expertise — diving, heritage, hiking, food — and their contributions will carry their name. That is the direction we have set ourselves.

What is our commitment to reliability?

We apply four rules, visible on every page of the site.

A source for every figure. Quantified claims refer to a consultable source, preferably an official Djiboutian portal. Every page displays the list of sources consulted at the foot of the content.

No invented figure. When data cannot be sourced, we say so plainly and use a qualitative formulation. That is the case, for example, with accommodation ranges: they are presented as orders of magnitude intended to compare neighbourhoods with one another, never as rates.

An update date distinct from the publication date. Both appear at the top of the page. Corrected information triggers a refreshed date, never a silent amendment.

A clear distinction between documentary and commercial. Links to the booking platform dalmar.app are flagged as such, and never determine a page’s editorial content. The detail appears in the editorial method.

What sources do we work from?

Our sources fall into three categories, in order of priority.

Official Djiboutian portals come first: the National Tourism Agency, the National Institute of Statistics and the government’s e-Visa portal. They are the only sources with authority on entry formalities, protected areas and statistical data.

Field records come next: distances covered, journey times, condition of tracks, observed seasons, price ranges noted with providers.

Secondary publications — specialist press, books, reports from international organisations — serve lastly to cross-check an isolated point, never to found a claim on their own.

What should you do if you spot an error?

Report it. Out-of-date information on ferry timetables, rates or entry rules can ruin a trip, and it is in our interest to correct it as quickly as possible.

Any useful correction leads to the amendment of the page concerned and the refreshing of its update date. Our correction policy, the list of our sources and how our commercial links work are set out on the editorial method page.

To discover what we publish, start with the overview what to see in Djibouti, then the twenty-seven destination pages. The magazine will host our dated reports as they are published.