How decisions are made
Methodology
Book Direct Japan asks whether there is a meaningful reason to check an official hotel rate. It does not compare live prices or declare the official website cheapest.
Two independent dimensions
Accessibility measures whether an international traveler can realistically join the membership program. Immediate Value measures benefits relevant to the current booking or stay. A program can be difficult to join while still offering strong value, so these dimensions are never collapsed into one score.
Unknown is not No
“Unknown” means a fact was not verified. It never means unsupported. For example, an undocumented foreign-phone format remains “Not verified,” not “No.”
Immediate and deferred value
Immediate benefits can help with the current booking or stay from the perspective of a newly joined base Member. Deferred benefits include points, future status, and benefits gated behind a higher tier. Tier eligibility and current-stay capability are stored separately from that editorial classification.
Traceable editorial decisions
A verdict is an explicit editorial judgment, not an automatic score. Every published hotel decision references the exact membership and hotel verification records used at publication. New checks create new records; they do not silently rewrite the historical decision.
Sources and conflicts
Official pages can still be stale. We preserve canonicality, conflicts, revised dates, and superseding sources so an official-domain legacy page does not become a current fact by accident.
Commercial independence
Affiliate compensation does not affect a verdict. See the full affiliate disclosure.