Once you’ve chosen what’s most important to you in a beach vacation from our list of attributes and activities in our Advanced Search here, the Match Score tells you how well a resort matches your unique set of preferences. Unlike other travel sites, we don’t require you to enter a destination before we show search results, so you can get search results with individual resorts in multiple locations; this is particularly useful if you aren’t sure which island, etc. to travel to, or want to compare two or more islands/locations. The Match Score uses a 12-notch rating scale, from A++ to F.

Unlike the standard 1-5 star hotel rating, the Overall Beach Resort Rating takes important beach resort-specific factors into account, such as the quality of the resort’s beach and swimming pool areas. It also captures the quality of the on-site restaurants, service, and rooms, in addition to the standard hotel star rating. Its purpose is to help you assess the quality of a beach resort as a whole and more accurately compare it to its peers. The Overall Beach Resort Rating uses a 16-notch rating scale, from Aaa to C.

Our relative value tool compares a resort’s Overall Beach Resort Rating to its average room price, telling you if it’s relatively overpriced or underpriced based on our assessment. We express a resort’s relative value with our TripValue, which is shown as a positive or negative number, or the word “Even.” For example, if Resort X has an Overall Beach Resort Rating of Aaa but is priced in line with Aa2-rated resorts, its TripValue would be +2 (a positive number, indicating it’s a “good deal”), because Aaa is two notches above Aa2 on the Overall Beach Resort Rating scale. If Resort Y is rated Aa2 but is priced in line with Aaa-rated resorts, its TripValue would be -2. If Resort Z is rated Aa2 and priced like a Aa2 resort, its TripValue would be “Even.” The highest possible TripValue is +7; the lowest is -7.

Our “Similar Resorts” peer comparison tool, located at the bottom of the Resort Details page, compares the resort you’re looking at to all others in our database. The percentages shown indicate how similar the peer resorts are to the resort you’re looking at, based on what we call the “Resort DNA.” When Tripfind’s Resort Analysts rate a resort, they assign a number score for each attribute/activity we have in our Advanced Search, to indicate how strong the resort is in each area. Collectively, this string of number scores is what we call the “Resort DNA,” and serves as the basis of our “Similar Resorts” percentage calculation, where we tell you exactly how similar one resort is to another.