Hotels.com adds new online mapping features

August 02, 2007 | Online Travel

Hotels.com has added new, interactive mapping capabilities to help customers select the right hotel for every trip.

“Our reputation as the hotel expert is based on our ability to offer in- depth property knowledge and tools to enhance the customer’s travel planning experience,” said Scott Booker, chief hotel expert for hotels.com. “The new mapping capabilities, in conjunction with our popular side-by-side comparisons, photos, virtual tours, user reviews, and detailed property descriptions, are designed to streamline the hotel selection and booking process.”

hotels.com partnered with deCarta, a leading provider of geospatial platform software and related services to implement the new mapping functionality, along with NAVTEQ for the detailed map database.

Whether someone is planning a shopping getaway to New York City and wants to find the best walking route to the boutiques on Fifth Avenue, or is looking for a San Diego hotel close to both the beach and SeaWorld, the new online mapping capabilities on hotels.com will simplify the hotel selection.

Using the new mapping features, travelers can display landmarks and points of interest surrounding their potential hotel choice on an interactive map. They also can drag the map in any direction, view the distance between two selected points, and the estimated driving and walking times between those points. The mapping features enable travelers to choose a hotel that is convenient to the local sites they want to visit (such as beaches, museums, parks, shopping areas and theaters) as well as transportation (such as airports and train stations).

“hotels.com has taken the lead in the hospitality market by embracing advanced mapping and navigation capabilities to drive competitive differentiation, increase customer traffic and deliver high user content and utility,” said J. Kim Fennell, president and CEO of deCarta. “We’re delighted to be working together to help showcase the distinctive capabilities of their site and to provide their customers with an excellent user experience in planning their trips.”

deCarta’s software uses data from NAVTEQ, a leading map data supplier to provide hotels.com with the detailed and comprehensive map data needed to optimize routing capabilities. NAVTEQ(R) map data gives hotels.com users access to millions of roads nationwide as well as over 6 million unique points of interest such as restaurants, leisure facilities, gas stations and ATMs.

“deCarta’s Drill Down Server platform is a proven and powerful engine that showcases the rich capabilities of the NAVTEQ digital map database,” said Winston Guillory, senior vice president, Consumer and Enterprise at NAVTEQ. “NAVTEQ is pleased to be working in concert with deCarta to meet the needs of such a well regarded and identifiable online presence as hotels.com.”