How Havio works · September 21, 2026

How Havio picks hotels, and how we make money

A recommendation is only worth something if you know how it was made and who is paying for it. Here is ours, in full.

1. We read what you wrote

You describe the trip in your own words. An AI model turns that into a structured brief: where, when, who is travelling, your budget, and what matters to you. Each thing that matters gets a weight: a must have, a nice to have or a bonus. "Near the hospital" and "free cancellation" might be musts; "breakfast" a nice to have.

You can see this brief above your results and change any part of it, by tapping or by telling Havio in plain words.

That is all the AI decides. It does not choose hotels, it does not write facts about them, and it cannot invent a pool a hotel does not have.

2. We pull every available hotel, with live prices

We ask our booking partner for every hotel around your destination that has a room for your dates and your party, with today's price. Nothing is cached: prices you see were fetched when you searched. If you asked for free cancellation, we fetch refundable rates separately so they are not crowded out by cheaper non-refundable ones.

3. We measure what you care about

For each hotel we work out the things your brief needs: the drive time to the place you named, the walk into town, whether the rate includes breakfast, whether a refundable rate exists and what it costs, how guests rate it. Drive and walk times come from routing data. When we have to estimate one from distance alone, we mark it as an estimate.

4. A scoring engine ranks them, not a language model

Hotels that fail a must-have are set aside. The rest are scored against your weights by ordinary, deterministic code: the same brief and the same hotels always give the same ranking. We then pick a handful that are different from each other in useful ways: the best overall, the best value, the best location, a splurge if one is worth it.

If nothing meets every must-have, we do not quietly bend your rules. We show the closest places, say which one requirement each fails, and offer to relax it.

5. We tell you the trade-off

Every pick comes with what you give up to get it: "not walkable to town", "$294 more than the cheapest pick", "10 minutes further from the venue". These are generated from the same measurements the ranking used, so the explanation cannot disagree with the score. Guest review summaries come from our partner's review feed and are shown as guests' opinions, not ours.

How we make money

When you book through Havio, the price includes a commission that the hotel's rate allows for. It is part of the total you are shown, not added on top, and it is how every booking site you have used earns its living. Payment is processed by our booking partner, Nuitee, which is also who confirms your reservation with the hotel.

What matters is what that commission is not allowed to do:

• The ranking cannot see it. The scoring engine receives the price you would pay and nothing about what we earn. A hotel that pays more cannot rank higher.
• We do not sell placement. There are no sponsored results and no "featured" hotels.
• We do not manufacture urgency. No "only 2 left", no countdown timers on prices, no "12 people are looking at this".
• Prices are totals. Taxes and mandatory fees are included everywhere, which is not as common as it should be.

What Havio cannot do yet

• We only recommend hotels our partner can book. A small independent inn that does not sell through booking networks will not appear.
• Hotel details such as amenities and photos come from the hotels' own listings. They are usually right and occasionally out of date.
• We are not always the cheapest. When a hotel sets a minimum selling price we respect it, and other sites sometimes run member-only discounts below it. We would rather tell you than pretend.

If something here does not match what you see on the site, that is a bug and we want to hear about it: tell us.