Three staged levels — and guard rails that don’t take claims at face value
Every entry on MICE carries a level that shows how far it has been checked. Here is exactly what each level means, how a listing moves up, and how we test claims rather than simply believing them.
We have discovered the option and placed it on the record. It is real enough to publish, but still awaiting deeper verification.
We can see the option confirmed across independent sources — its details cross-check against more than one place we trust.
The owner has claimed the listing and submitted their own data — the highest level, tempered by our guard rails against unchecked claims.
A national record is only as useful as it is trustworthy, and trust only means something if you can tell how far it has been earned. That is why every entry on MICE carries a verification level. Rather than presenting everything with the same confident voice, we show you the difference between something we have merely found and something an owner has confirmed and we have tested. The level is always visible, so you know how much weight to give each entry when you make a decision.
Everything begins at Level 1. When we find an option — a venue, a restaurant, a transport operator, an activity, an incentive specialist — we add it to the record and mark it as Listed. At this stage the entry has been discovered from a credible source and is real enough to publish, but it has not yet been independently confirmed in depth. Being comprehensive means listing things as we discover them, and Level 1 is our honest way of saying: this exists, and we are still checking the finer detail.
We publish Level 1 entries deliberately, because a record that only shows fully verified listings would be far too thin to be useful. But we never disguise their status. A Listed entry is clearly a starting point, not a final word.
An entry moves to Level 2 when we can see it verified — when its details cross-check against independent sources rather than resting on a single mention. If a venue’s name, location, capacity or contact information line up across more than one place we trust, the entry is Corroborated. This is the point at which the record stops relying on a single thread of evidence and starts standing on several.
Level 2 is where most of the day-to-day confidence in MICE lives. It reflects genuine cross-checking: not a claim from one direction, but agreement from several. It tells you that the core facts about an option have held up when compared against the wider world.
The highest level is Level 3, reached when the owners themselves claim the property or business and submit their own data. Nobody knows a venue better than the people who run it, so an owner-verified listing can carry richer, more current and more precise information than anything we could assemble from the outside — the real spaces and capacities, what is genuinely on offer, and the details that only an insider would know.
But Level 3 is not a rubber stamp, and this is important: we do not just assume that what we are told is correct. Claiming a listing opens the door to submit information; it does not automatically make that information true in our eyes.
This is where our guard rails come in. When an owner submits data, we cross-examine anything that looks unusual, outsized or inconsistent with what we already know. A capacity that jumps far beyond what a space could plausibly hold, a claim that conflicts with independent sources, a detail that does not fit the rest of the record — these are tested rather than taken at face value. If a claim cannot be reconciled with the evidence, it is not simply accepted because someone asserted it.
The principle is straightforward. Owner input makes the record better, but the record must stay honest. Money does not buy placement or trust on MICE, and neither does confidence of assertion. A claim earns its place by holding up to scrutiny, not by being stated loudly.
Verification tells you how well the facts of a listing have been checked. To help you judge the experience, we layer independent signals on top. We read reviews and the Google, Yelp and Tripadvisor ratings for a location, and we surface information about events, so a profile reflects not only what has been verified but also what the wider public actually thinks. These signals are drawn from platforms people already trust, gathered per location, and dated so you can see how recent they are.
Together, the tiers and the layered reviews are how we do our best to support the most informed decisions. The verification level tells you how far we have confirmed an entry; the reviews and ratings tell you how it is regarded in the real world. Neither is a guarantee — venues change, and the services provided by third parties are beyond our control — but taken together they give you a clear, honest and current basis for choosing, and for confirming the final details directly with the provider before you commit.