Positive Travel Advice

Our Man On The Ground is a unique advisory service based in London, providing free travel advice worldwide from people who are passionate about travel, culture and eating out.

From small boutique to larger 4 and 5 star hotels and luxury ski chalets, we have a team of local men and women on the ground in many cities and towns around the world whose goal is to find those wonderful places to stay, eat, drink, ski and relax.  We also advise you on how best to get around a city, as well as its must-see highlights.

Our main focus is helping our users find quality ‘local’ information and our growing network of men and women on the ground make this possible. They play a vital role in giving you insider knowledge on hidden gems of places. You could say it’s almost like having a local friend to show you around.

Do you know some great places we don’t have?  We’d love you to become part of our growing network of women and men on the ground. All you need to do is register and write reviews to your heart’s content!  All our reviewer members who receive our monthly newsletter have access to special and discounted travel offers throughout the year before anyone else sees them.

We only focus on positive reviews and so if a place does not meet our criteria we don't write a bad review, we simply don't feature it.  As well as reviewing the more upmarket restaurants we also bring you some great value places we have discovered.  After all sometimes you just want to have a great pizza with some friends without paying an arm and a leg for it.  On the hotel front we tend to focus on a more niche market.  We do hope you will find our service a breath of fresh air in comparison to some of the other review websites, as we try to cut through all the clutter.

You will find a seal of approval on reviews carried out by our team of men and women on the ground in the major cities around the world.  Our contributors are a mix of passionate locals who love to travel and explore, freelance writers and professional travel journalists.  All our contributors are food lovers and are sensitive to style and good taste.

Paris
Pierre Abécassis has lived in the city for over 30 years and adopted it as his home, having lived in Bordeaux and Africa.  He runs his own successful creative agency and dines out on a regular basis.  Pierre can often be seen whizzing around Paris on his scooter!

London
Aurelia Bonito is a freelance travel writer and marketing consultant researching all aspects of travel worldwide.  Her pursuit is to explore the best possible means to travel and eat well whilst on the move, taking into consideration a tourist and business traveller's perspective, reflecting needs and priorities of the traveller in a foreign land.

Simon Brooke writes about the luxury sector from a consumer and business perspective. In particular, he covers luxury travel. The publications he contributes to include the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and The Times, as well as magazines such as Brummell (part of Financial News), Sphere magazine, PrivatAir and Sunseeker yacht magazine.  Recent subjects that he has covered include the rise of new luxury designer hotels (for the Financial Times), the increasing use of specially commissioned art in luxury hotels (for Sphere) and a profile of a new private jet service (for Brummell).

Our spa-loving Woman on the Ground is born and bred Londoner Annabelle Hood. She's an award-winning journalist who has had luxury health spa, travel and foodie features published in magazines and newspapers including Vogue, Diplomat, The Evening Standard, Spa Secrets, Spa Business, TTG Luxury and ABTA Magazine (Association of British Travel Agents). Websites she's written for include Spa Wellbeing, Foodepedia, The Culinary Guide, Key2Luxury and Handbag.com.  More information can be found on her website.

Maria Kuehn is a chef, writer and winner of The Observer Food Monthly Awards 2011 and has her own food and recipe website and blog.

Keith Springer supplied fresh produce to the restaurant trade in the early 1980’s and counted Chez Nico, La Tante Claire, The Mirabelle, Le Caprice, The Ivy, Menage À Trois and Gravetye Manor amongst his clientele.  He opened his first restaurant, Continental Drift in 1993 and went on to found the Chelsea Jazz Supper Club, JaK’s of Lower Sloane Street in 1996, which was awarded a bib gourmand by Michelin.  His irreverent restaurant review column, Man About Town, first appeared in Epicurean Life Magazine the following year and he has just celebrated the column’s 15^th Anniversary and was recently appointed Features Editor. 

Emma Westman is a freelance travel writer who also specialises in tourist board and hotel representation.  Although she is based in London, she has lived in Santa Barbara, Edinburgh and Somerset.  She has a penchant for Hendricks-based cocktails.

Angie Quaglia jetsets around the world for a well-known British airline and is a discerning restaurant frequenter in not only far flung parts of the world but also those hidden away gems closer to home.

New York
Kate Williams is a London native, New York City resident and frequent flyer who loves to find those hidden gems.

Anastasia Mills Healy is a career travel writer and editor whose work has appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Fodor’s, Zagat, Travel Agent, and Luxury Travel Advisor, among others.  Whilst New York is her home, New Orleans is her passion.  Not only has she travelled to 40 countries on five continents, but she is particularly proud of having visited all 50 U.S. states!

Los Angeles, California
Jenny Pellicer is a Freelance Travel Writer who after living in Norway, London and Mexico has settled down in LA.  She is also a freelance writer for various other publications including the LA Times and Natural Child World Magazine.  When she isn’t typing away she and her husband are busy discovering all that Los Angeles has to offer, travelling and writing her own blog.

With seven years of reviewing under her belt, Jolie Loeb, a Luxury Lifestyle columnist for several Los Angeles based publications, specializes in local travel, beauty treats, fine dining and marketplace fare as well as under the radar nooks that respectfully deserve a little limelight.

Arizona
An Arizona native, Kendra Ford has lived in London, Florence, Italy, and Mexico. She began freelance travel writing after graduating from the prestigious University of the Arts, London with a Post-Graduate degree in Journalism. Kendra currently resides in Scottsdale, juggling her jet-setting career as a marketing executive and her passion for travel writing.

Hong Kong
Stuart Heaver is a freelance journalist based in Hong Kong from where he travels extensively across mainland China and Asia. His features for the South China Morning Post, Fragrant Harbour and a small number of award winning travel and airline publications have ranged from whale shark safaris in the Philippines to Chinese pirates in the Taiwan Straits.