HookahReport is an online magazine written in an editorial style. We publish reviews and how-to information designed to help the hookah-smoking enthusiast to enjoy their hobby that-much-more. But our purpose doesn’t stop there. We aim to serve to hookah industry in three ways.

The Hookah-Smoking Consumer

As consumers ourselves, we want to make sure our money and time is well spent. One of HookahReport’s main goals is to help the consumer make informed decisions about purchases they may choose to make. But stewardship is important too. Our how-to information is designed to help consumers get the most out of the products they choose to purchase, and have a great overall experience.

The Hookah Product Vendors

We believe that a great smoking experience gains a lot of juice from a great shopping experience. Consider car dealerships. If a dealership were to sell you the most expensive car they sold, but not the car you needed, your overall automotive experience would suffer. It’s no different in the hookah industry. We aim to support those online and local vendors who do an excellent job serving the customer. Not just an excellent job at getting their money.

The Hookah Product Manufacturers

Our scope of loyalty is not only to the consumers and vendors. We believe that a great smoking experience has a great deal to do with the availability of great products. For this reason, we regularly work with product manufacturers to help them better understand what customers want and need. Of course, we’re never too shy to tell the world when something sucks, but we’re also not going to assume that trashing a company’s product is the best way to bring about positive changes in the product landscape.

Our Ethics

We believe in being fair and honest. Many company’s choose to send us products for review. Generally they initiate this relationship and do it of their own volition. However, these companies do so with the understanding that we are committed to reviewing honestly, whether that means good press or bad.

In some situations, however, we will choose to withhold a review while a company takes our criticism into consideration and attempts to implement them and improve their product. It is by mutual respect and sensitivity that we are able to bring positive change to the hookah culture, and usually that means treating business owners like people who are learning their way through life, just like we are.

Whether we choose to withhold a review or not, we are committed to honesty in general, but especially in whatever we should choose to publish.

How We Review Tobacco

Reviewing a flavor can be tricky. So much of it is subjective that it’s hard to review something in such a way that everyone will agree with you.

For this reason, we attempt to isolate the constant, objective qualities and allow them to weigh in on the review as much as possible. In order to ensure that we are as familiar as possible with a flavor we intend to review, we always smoke that flavor 3 – 5 times before writing our review. We break our ratings into the following four categories.

Flavor

This one is always subjective. It literally refers to how ‘smokeable’ is the flavor. Subjective as it may be, however, we always try to give this rating based less on whether we like it, but rather how much someone will like it. For example, not everyone likes cinnamon flavored shisha tobacco. But by attempting to analyze the different qualities of the flavor, we can, with relative accuracy, guess what rating it deserves for what it is and recommend it to those who it may appeal to.

The flavor rating will often appear favorable. This is largely because there are very few flavors which are truly unsmokeable. Most can be enjoyed by someone, it’s just a matter of recommending it to the right person. Therefore it’s rare for the flavor rating to drop below 2.5 out of 5. This does happen however, especially when a flavor produces a particularly unpleasant sour or chemical taste, which would generally be considered universally unpleasant.

The flavor rating is offset by our Who Should Try This Flavor section of every review. In this section, we make our best estimation about who a particular flavor might appeal to.

Smoke

The Smoke rating is given based on the thickness and density of the smoke. While some are uninterested in the density of the smoke, when it comes to new-school smokers, it’s generally considered a positive quality when the smoke is heavy and dense.

Resilience

The Resilience rating refers to how well the tobacco responds to the changes in heat an average bowl goes through during a session. It also refers to how easily the tobacco becomes harsh when overheated.

Longevity

The Longevity rating, as the word suggests, simply refers to how long the tobacco smokes before the smoke and flavor begin to die out.

The Competition

We have no delusions about HookahReport’s presence on the internet. We are not the only game in town. And some have been around much longer than we have. While we strive to do an excellent job in anything we support or publish, sometimes others will do it better. For this reason, we don’t see the other sites on the internet which share our goals as competitors. We see them as partners filling in our gaps, just like we sometimes fill in theirs. We are not threatened by them, and we hope they are not threatened by us.

Advertising Policy

As of right now, and all of the foreseeable future, HookahReport does not charge for advertising. The advertisers you see featured on HookahReport were hand selected and receive the publicity free of charge. In most cases, we get nothing in return. We hold this policy because money complicates a lot of things, and our irons are in other fires. If you are a business owner and wish to be featured on HookahReport, the best way to do that is to deliver an outstanding experience to your customers.

Take It With a Grain of Salt

While we know hookah up and down and we love just about everything about it, we aren’t perfect. We are never going to be right 100% of the time. Just as we have patience and respect for the various parts of the hookah industry, we also hope that our readers and partners will have patience and respect for us.

We want you to have confidence in what we choose to publish, but if you do not, please don’t hesitate to browse our partners and the online communities. Take what is written here, and everywhere on the internet, with a grain of salt and remember that no one is perfect.

Happy Smoking!