About PinthePool
Someone Had to Take
Pools Seriously
Hotel pools are the most photographed amenity in travel — and the least honestly reviewed. We fixed that.
Here's what happens with every hotel pool you've ever seen on Instagram: the shot is taken at 6am by a travel photographer who was given exclusive access before the chairs filled up, the bar opened, and the children arrived. The review on TripAdvisor says "great pool!" and the hotel website calls it "an oasis." You show up on a Tuesday in July and there's a four-hour wait for a chaise lounge and a swim-up bar that stops serving at 4pm.
That's the gap PinthePool was built to close.
We review pools the way a restaurant critic reviews restaurants — with a consistent scale, a trained eye, and enough visits to know what "exceptional" actually looks like. Not every pool is trying to be the Four Seasons Maui. But every pool is worth understanding on its own terms. Is the water cold enough? Are there enough servers? Do the lounge chairs have cushions, or are you renting real estate on a slab of plastic?
These are the questions we answer. And we answer them honestly.
Bill Zanetti
Pool Critic & Founder
Meet the Critic
Bill Zanetti
I've been writing about theme parks and hospitality for over a decade — covering Disney, Universal, cruise lines, and resorts for MiceChat, and teaching theme park management and hospitality technology at UCF. That background gave me a framework for evaluating guest experience at a granular level.
Turns out, that framework works perfectly for hotel pools.
I can also help you book the trip — not just tell you whether the pool is worth it. Between TEA and IAAPA memberships, years of on-site research, and an obsessive commitment to actually swimming in these things before passing judgment. . . I've got the receipts.
The certified rating you see on every pool page is mine. I assign it after a personal visit. If I haven't been there yet, it says so — and you can request a visit to move it up the priority list.
Our Rating System
Two Scores. One Truth.
Every pool on PinthePool carries two distinct scores — the critic's certified rating and the community score. They're different things and we don't blend them.
Certified Rating
Assigned by Bill after a personal visit. This is the authoritative score — the one that took a plane ticket, a pool chair, and usually a swim-up cocktail to earn. Non-negotiable. Cannot be bought, sponsored, or influenced.
Community Score
The percentage of verified user reviews that are positive. Think: Rotten Tomatoes audience score. Real guests, real visits, aggregated honestly. The community often catches things a single critic visit misses.
The Scale
+/− modifiers apply to every grade above F. An A+ is the best pool you can have without earning that P. A B− is one bad visit away from a C. The modifiers matter — a pool that earns an A− at noon might be a B+ by 3pm. We factor in the full range of what a visit looks like.
What We Actually Look At
Every certified rating covers these dimensions — weighted by how much each one matters.
Have questions? A pool worth rating?
Reach out. We actually read these.