Interactive Hotel Locator Maps - New Tool
 

We've just launched a new tool for finding hotels that I think that the Flyertalk community will find useful.

Interactive Hotel Maps is in Beta now and we look forward to feedback from everyone to enhance it in future revisions.

Over 56,000 hotels worldwide are plotted on the map and you can choose your initial search radius (in miles or kilometers) and then zoom in or pan around your results. You can choose from street or satellite view (or hybrid) so you can see exactly where the hotel is situated.

When you click a hotel you will get the name, address, recent lowest rates, and, of course, a reservation link.

And as a special bonus feature intended primarily for Flyertalkers, you can limit the search to one or more hotel chains (i.e. All Starwood hotels, or all Starwood AND all Hilton Hotels) or even to individual brands (i.e. Hampton Inn only).

Note that, at the current time, only select countries are supported. They are listed on the site and will be updated as we make enhancements.

It is part of Hotel Magician but also has a proud vanity URL. Take your pick ;-)

http://hotelmagician.com/interactive_hotel_maps/

or

http://InteractiveHotelMaps.com

All feedback welcomed - on this thread, by PM, or by comments on the site.

Looks interesting except using firefox when i try to enter anything into any search field and then exit that search field the contents are delted - is this site compatible with firefox?

works for me using firefox, tried airport code

Daveland-get me some PDA hookup, or palm\google maps

booked marked for sure

Interesting, Looks useful. Upclose there are some issues as I looked up the last hotel I stayed (in Nanuet, NY) and the icon isn't near where the hotel is (off by about 3/4 mile). Still, it looks like a very good tool if you're trying to stay in an area, or trying to eyeball the closest property for a chain. Worth a bookmark :)

Where are you getting your address feed?

Thanks for the comments!

alect - Are you entering in only one search field? If you switch to another field the first will wipe clean as you can only search by one method (plus filters). If that's not it, please let me know the version of Firefox you are using. Yes, it is a fully supported browser.

windwalker - If this gets enough interest we'd certainly consider a PDA sized app.

gof - Can you PM me the hotel in question? It could be that the database has a wrong address. I know Nanuet well so that should be easy to figure out :) The address feed comes from our hotel reservations database. It could also be geocoding incorrectly for whatever reason. We've tested far more extensively in cities than suburbs.

Well I had some issues with the maps being somewhat sluggish when zooming into the DC area (where I actually am trying to decide on a hotel right now, so this is being a helpful tool), but at the same time the Panama City, FL area seems to display the maps without much of an issue. I dont know if its my computer, or Google, or if others are experiencing similar issues or what.

I would also second a PDA version. I like to have data on the go. Sure I could pull out my tablet pc, but really that can be an inconveince when your walking around an airport, etc.

Overall I think its a great tool (It too is now in my favorites), and is much more upto date than my copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005! ^ :cool:

Berto - what search radius did you use for your search? The default? I think the sluggishness *may* have to do with the sheer number of hotels loaded in that radius in DC vs. the same radius in FL. A smaller search radius would probably increase your map speed. The difficulty we had in picking a default was that in suburban areas you need a large radius (i.e. 20 miles) while in a place like Manhattan, 5 miles is more than enough.

That said, we are caching city searches in the database so the speed of those searches should improve with time as well.

Not documented, but it appears to work if you enter only a zip code.

Excellent!

I did see that this HI Express near me:

12683 West Indore Place
Littleton, CO, US 80127

Was mapped in the wrong location, and was advertised as being near the Denver Tech Center, which it is decidedly not...

Hi Bonehead - is the address of the hotel wrong in our database? The map says that is the right location even when I put the address in directly. The DB says it is at 12683 West Indore Place. Do you know how far from the spot shown on the map it actually is? (Yes, it's plain to see that it is being plotted on a street corner by a few houses!)

I think some of these errors, BTW, come from the mapping software. I know I've used my Garmin Nuvi GPS on more than one occasion where it steered me to someone's living room for a diner and a shopping mall was plotted on a farm a good 20 miles from the correct location. Unfortunately any of those types of errors are going to be built into ours by default. In those situations all we can do is "turn off" a particular hotel that is showing up incorrectly.

I had tried variable radius DCA last night. The 20 mile is still sluggish (somewant expected), but can say that the 5 mile was running alot smoothly this morning. ^

Also, I didnt notice this at first glance when I looked at the Panama City Beach, FL area, but there are three hotels that are located in the wrong spot. I dont know if you can manually change them, but I know why it is happening. Many of the beach front hotels lie along Front Beach Road (Alt. US98/SR30), yet are appearing on the north end of the city alogn Back Beach road (US98/SR30A). The funny thing is that one of the three has the correct adress (Front Beach Rd.), but yet is mapped on Back Beach Rd. A quick search on google maps and virtual earth, places them at their correct locations.

Hmm. I only see 2 hotels on Back Beach Road - Holiday Inn Sunspree and Ocean Towers. Are these supposed to be on Front Beach? The addresses we have for both are on West Highway 98 - which the Back beach Road appears to be - but then again I see Route 98 going west on two roads.... If these are not the hotels, which are? :)

Thanks for the heads-up on this new tool...and keep up the good work.

Those are two of the hotels; The third hotel was at the intersection of Back Beach Rd/US98/SR30 and SR70/Arnold Rd (about 4-5 miles west of the other two)....its called the Beachcomber by the Sea. I dont know why that one is displaying on Back Beach as the popup is even saying Front Beach....:confused:

This is a common problem people tend to have when they head to PCB, with the two only lengthy East/West roads being a variant of US98 (even odder is how their SR designations are reversered). Sometimes Maps mislabel Front Beach as US98, or as SR30A, and sometimes even local businesses dont realize their mistake of putting US98 versus Alt US98 sometimes. Which must have happened with Ocean Towers got their third phone line: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=e...UTF8&z=12&om=1.

This brings back memories of working at a Publix on the beach and having to give directions all over the place..... :)

ah yres - thanks - didn't realize - assumed that i could have searched by city/address and hotel name (eg hilton). But figured i could do an address and chain search so ^

FYI - taking advantage of an addition to Google Maps, you can now search for your hotel by major landmark - i.e. type Empire State Building in the City/Landmark field and it will plot your radius from 34th and 5th in NYC.

Berto - can you take another peek at Panama City Beach? I *think* we've got this all fixed now :)

Just checked, everything is right where it belongs! ^ :cool:

I trust this is on sub-topic at least.

Glad you have Panama City in good shape...what a great beach to hang out on.

Update to the software - you can now search for rates directly from the maps. Date parameters will be saved for 24 hours or until you change dates so you don't have to re-enter as you search availability at multiple properties. Pictures are also shown on-hover when available.

As always, feedback welcome. :)

It's a nice idea and potentially very useful. But really don't like the way the mouseover popups just stay there even after you move the mouse away from the hotel locator. The mouseover popups should disappear once you move the mouse away. This one feature is so irritating I find it a major obstacle to using the maps.

Tim - thanks for the feedback.

I trust you noticed the X in the top right corner to close a bubble? Still, we know that the behavior is not perfect. What we're not sure of is, what the ideal behavior would be given that some people like to mouse over a lot of hotels in a very small radius while others search large suburban area with very few hotels per mile.

The problem with having it disappear when you move past is that we don't know if you are moving the mouse up and around to one of the links in the bubble.

What we could do is revert to the original behavior where you need to click on the hotel icon to see the info and then hit the X that is in the top right to close it and select another (or just click on another icon which will simultaneously close the 1st and open the new one).

Thoughts?

Once you notice the x marks to close the window, and also notice that when you click somewhere on the map the popup closes, it becomes more manageable. But it still seems confusing to have one popup block so much of the map even when you mouse away from it. I don't know what the solution is. I kind of prefer the way that, for instance, the ua.com hotel site does it: the map indicators are just numbers, and then you can scroll down to the number of the hotel in a list below that.

I also notice that your site says that the Travelodge Chessington Tolworth is right in the middle of Heathrow Airport -- can this be correct? Chessington Tolworth is near Hampton Court, not all the way to Heathrow, isn't it?

Fair enough - we'll take another look at the mouseover behavior.

Regarding that Travelodge: indeed it is on the wrong spot. But it's a function of the property loading incorrect coordinates. What I will do is forward the property to our technical team who will have it checked and fixed (probably in 1-2 days tops). This does happen occasionally, though infrequently. It's an easy fix when notified though and we do have a link at the bottom of the map to notify us of any inaccuracies.

Timfid - the Heathrow hotel coordinates have been updated. No more Travelodge in the middle of the runway ;-) Cheers.

typed in Hong Kong, the map returned 2 hotels in France....

Correct. It would not function properly in Hong Kong as the Google Maps API doesn't support it. At the top of the maps page we list supported countries:

Currently supported countries in the Interactive Hotel Maps include: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Monaco, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States of America, as well as Birmingham and London in the United Kingdom.

I'm not sure why it would return two hotels in France except that those hotels must have given GDS incorrect coordinates.

Long time without an update, but we are testing a new feature where you can book certain properties from the map directly at the relevant company's website. (It will take you directly to that property's booking page.)

You can still check the corresponding Hotel Magician rates from the same spot. This can be especially useful in cases when you want to book directly but they show as sold out, while we have prepaid rooms still available.

Currently this should work on all Westin, Sheraton, and Four Points branded properties. If this is successful we'll of course move to include more brands.

Interactive Hotel Maps