Editorial Standards
How we research, verify, license images, and disclose — in plain language
Our mission
Visit Penang exists to help travellers plan a trip to Penang with the same level of detail a local friend would give you. That means accurate opening hours, honest opinions about food and hotels, real prices in ringgit, and clear notes on the things guidebooks tend to gloss over — visa quirks, halal availability, hospital wait times, when a famous beach is actually clean. The standards on this page are how we deliver on that. They are public so you can hold us to them.
Where our information comes from
Every fact on the site traces back to a source we can name. The main ones:
- Wikimedia Commons — every photograph on the site is sourced from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0, or public domain). Individual photographer credits and licence details are listed on our Image Attributions page.
- Penang tourism knowledge base — campaign calendars, festival dates, and partnership announcements come from Penang Global Tourism (PGT), the Penang Convention & Exhibition Bureau (PCEB), and the Penang Tourism, Arts, Culture & Entertainment State Executive Committee (PETACE). We cite the announcement when an event date or fact comes from one of these bodies.
- JAKIM halal certification portal — restaurants we mark as halal-certified are checked against the official JAKIM register at halal.gov.my. If a restaurant is Muslim-owned or pork-free but not JAKIM-certified, we say so in those words — we do not use "halal" as shorthand.
- Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) — any clinician quoted, reviewed, or cited by name in our medical content is verified against the MMC register at mmc.gov.my before publication. Registration numbers are recorded with the editorial draft.
- Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) — currency conversions, indicative exchange rates, and any reference to the official ringgit rate use BNM's published figures from bnm.gov.my.
- Primary-source review — for restaurants, hotels, attractions, and walking routes, we work from in-person visits wherever practical. Where a listing is based on second-hand reporting (a hotel we have not stayed in, a hospital wing we have not toured), we say so and avoid making first-person claims.
How we fact-check
A listing or article moves through three checkpoints before it stays on the site:
1. Editorial review on publish. The author confirms every claim against its source. Opening hours, prices, addresses, and phone numbers are cross-checked against the venue's own channels (their website, their Google Business profile, or a phone call for unlisted spots). Names of people and businesses are spelled as the owner spells them.
2. Freshness re-verification. We track every listing's last-verified date in an internal freshness dashboard. When a listing is older than six months for restaurants and hotels — or twelve months for attractions and walking routes — it is flagged for re-check. Closed venues are removed; renamed or relocated venues are updated.
3. Reader corrections. If something on the site is wrong, please tell us. Every listing page accepts feedback, and any factual correction we receive is assigned to an editor within the same week. If a correction is significant — a venue closed, a price doubled, a contact number changed — the fix goes live immediately and a short note records the change.
Image licensing
All editorial photography on Visit Penang is sourced from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences. We do not use stock photography for editorial content, we do not use AI-generated imagery for editorial content, and we do not crop out attribution to make a photo "ours." The full photographer-by-photographer credit list lives on the Image Attributions page.
Where a business supplies us with a press image (a hotel's room photo, a venue's interior shot), we credit it individually in the listing and only use it with the venue's written permission. Press images are never used in ways that suggest first-person review when we have not visited.
Affiliate disclosure
Visit Penang earns a commission when readers book through some of the links on the site. The specifics:
- Hotels — we partner with Agoda. When you click through to a hotel page and complete a booking, Agoda pays us a percentage of the booking value.
- Tours, tickets, and experiences — we partner with Klook, GetYourGuide, and Viator. Bookings made via VisitPenang links pay us a commission on the activity cost.
- Transport — we partner with 12Go for bus, ferry, and train bookings across Malaysia and the region. 12Go pays us a small commission per booking.
Two rules govern how we use these links. First, the price you pay is the same as if you booked directly — affiliate commission comes out of the platform's margin, not your wallet. Second, we only feature places we would recommend without commission. A restaurant, hotel, or tour does not get added to the site because it pays — it gets added because we think it is worth your time. We do not run paid placements dressed up as editorial. If a piece of content is paid for, it carries a "Sponsored" label and is clearly separated from editorial.
Medical content (YMYL) policy
Medical tourism is a real reason people come to Penang, and our medical content has to meet a higher bar than the rest of the site. Google's quality-rater guidelines call this category Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) — content that could affect a reader's health, safety, or finances. We treat it that way.
Right now, our medical articles are bylined "Visit Penang Editorial" while we recruit a Penang-based clinician to take on a formal medical reviewer role (target Q3 2026). When that lands, every medical page will carry a "Reviewed by [clinician name], MMC reg [number]" footer with the date of review, and any change to clinical guidance will trigger a fresh review cycle.
Until then, please read our medical content as educational information about hospitals, procedures, costs, and the practical side of travelling for treatment — not as medical advice. Always speak to a licensed clinician before deciding on a procedure or changing a treatment plan. If something on the medical pages reads like a recommendation rather than information, that is a drafting error on our part — please flag it.
Conflicts of interest
Visit Penang is not owned by any hospital, hotel chain, restaurant group, or tourism authority. We hold no equity stake in any business we cover, and no business covered on the site has any equity, debt, or governance role in Visit Penang.
Where an author has a personal relationship with a venue — a family member's restaurant, a hotel owned by a friend — we disclose it in the byline and either skip the review or hand it to a different author. The same applies to gifted stays and comped meals: if a venue covers a cost as part of a press visit, the resulting article says so at the top.
Corrections and feedback
If anything on the site is wrong — a closed restaurant still listed, a wrong price, a misspelled name, a misattributed photo — please email us at hello@visitpenang.com and we will fix it. Significant corrections are noted on the relevant page; small fixes (typos, address tweaks) are made silently. We aim to acknowledge corrections within three working days.
For other questions about how we work — partnerships, press, or whether a specific listing was paid for — the same address gets a faster reply than any contact form.