white label travel portal travcoding logo

What is Hotel Mapping And Which Tool Your Company Should Use

After reading this post, you will better understand hotel mapping and what solutions exist out there that can help your business.

We have often heard people commenting how different locations for a hotel show up when they search for it using the name and street address and we ask ourselves, how is it possible? Or seeing multiple hotels duplicated when doing a search, are these errors? 

Contrary to what many believe, the hotels aren’t trying to misguide you deliberately. More often than not, this inconsistency can be attributed to mapping. Let’s not forget how vast and spread out the hospitality distribution market is. Therefore, it’s not really surprising that there are discrepancies in the data available online. Hence, to minimize this and ensure better customer satisfaction, it’s vital to invest in hotel mapping. 

In addition, the thing is, this technology is pretty expensive. Also, this is why many places are reluctant to use hotel AI or Machine Learning service providers and instead prefer developing a tool of their own for this purpose. Before we talk about which option is better, first, let’s better understand what hotel mapping is all about and how it works.

A Brief Insight Into Hotel Mapping

Hotel mapping refers to the process wherein property IDs from different sources are merged. Basically, when talking about a hotel booking flow, this reduces inconsistencies and also prevents duplication in listings. 

Let’s give you an example. You will find the same kind of room in a hotel listed differently across various platforms. This gives rise to confusion. And since it’s not possible to correct it manually, you need some help. This is where the technology of hotel mapping can come to your assistance as the content across all platforms can now be unified.

Hotel mapping includes many details, including contact information, address, ZIP code, and policies, among others.

In fact, you can even opt for room mapping with some software providers. This ensures that your customers will get information about the room type, name, view, and even bed type when they search for it online. Sounds helpful, doesn’t it?

How To Start With Hotel Mapping?

You will come across many software providers like GIATA, Gimmonix, Vervotech and travcoding.

Typically, these companies offer two types of solutions: 

  1. You use an online tool with a user-friendly interface. Simply upload the hotel inventory file, select distributors for mapping, and get the data back.
  2. The other option is API which is a lot more sophisticated and accurate. Moreover, the most significant benefit of APIs is that they allow you to update information without repeating the whole process.

So, the main question is, which service provider should you go for? As we have mentioned, there are many options available. 

Let’s shed some light on the ones used most frequently.

This is perhaps the largest hotel database that offers options for both automated and manual mapping

Considering that it has been in the business since 1996, you know that this software works. Its large hotel catalog contains over 1000,000 properties. 

Since even Google is their client, you have little reason to believe that this software would let you down in any capacity. Futher, GIATA offers a mapping service to both hotels and travel agencies. It uses a universal property code, GIATA multicode, for this purpose.

Finally, GIATA has a different solution for room mapping too.

This travel technology company offers fully automated cloud-based solutions for mapping. The data obtained via this software is nearly 99% accurate. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, it takes the software only 24 hours to process the data.

Furthermore, no manual work is required for mapping if this software is used. Basically, they offer both API integrations and GUI options for mapping. Additionally, both hotel and room level mapping is included in it.

If you want to make the best use of hotel AI, this one’s a good option. Also, with content solutions powered by AI, they offer nearly 99.99% accurate results. Moreover, the best thing about this solution is that it provides the latest content with real-time updates. 

Not only that, it further enhances the user experience by displaying opinionated content for every hotel.

On the other hand, this travel technology company offers an integrated solution that works through API, white labels, or widgets. Moreover, they even work on custom solutions for your business.

Equally important, their proprietary technology combines years of experience with machine learning, delivering nearly 99.9% accurate results. 

Nevertheless, the main differentiator from the other tools is that when you work with travcoding, you are not paying for a tool. Indeed, your company owns an instance / version of the tool. 

How To Decide The Best Approach For Hotel Mapping

With so many solutions and service providers, things are bound to get confusing. But considering the role it plays in your hotel engine and customer satisfaction, it’s crucial to select the best possible options. 

Therefore, you must evaluate all the available options with immense scrutiny. As a matter of fact, if you intend to use a service provider for mapping, ensure that it doesn’t categorize hotel data differently. Naturally, you want to enhance the booking engine. For this reason, it’s beneficial to use tools with large databases.

Moreover, don’t forget to consider the features. Hotel mapping is complicated as it is. Don’t make matters worse by going for a solution that does not incorporate all your required features. Additionally, if you want your hotel profiles to be viewed by people worldwide, go for tools that offer multilingual mapping.

Lastly, figure out your requirements and ask yourself, do you need hotel API integration or the simple drag and drop interface will be enough for you? Keep in mind that API works better for dynamic data. It’s best to go for a service provider who will help you with API integration.

Hotel Mapping Best For Your Business

It might be tempting to try to save money by developing your own mapping tool, however, in the long run, it’s the integrated solutions that will benefit your business.

In brief, they will not only reduce incidences of over-booking but also save a lot of your time since most of the things will be automated. Again, you will get more direct bookings, and customer satisfaction will also increase manifold. Lastly, if you want to eradicate discrepancies and inconsistencies in your data available online, hotel mapping is a must.

Role of Travcoding to Provide a Mapping Solution

Travcoding is a leading Travel Technology company dedicated to designing white label and custom travel solutions for travel wholesalers and other unique customer verticals where travel is desired. In addition, their robust, automated Web-based platform is designed with built-in features to seamlessly manage customer subscriptions, and registrations without the hassle of doing so. What’s more depending on the size and requirements of your business, you can customize your travel products to provide the best value to your customers and internal company members through our integrated back office. To conclude, you’ve selected the benefits and customized the booking portal; you can launch an online travel company and market hotels and other travel services.

As mentioned above, travcoding offers a mapping solution as part of their services. 

Finally, you can find out more here: www.travcoding.com

Other travcoding posts