The travel and hospitality industry is one of the foundation beams of the world’s eCommerce economy. In the US alone, the hotel industry is estimated to be worth around a whopping $198 billion.
Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, several big giants, for instance, Airbnb and bookings.com saw a significant rise in the number of app downloads. Below graphical representation by Statista shows the number of OTA downloads worldwide in the year 2020.
To take care of such humongous demands, there are many online travel agencies or “OTAs” that cater to every need of a traveller, including hotel bookings.
However, visitors often find different details of the same property on different OTAs or can also encounter the same property multiple times. This is because of the different channels these agencies used to collect their data. Hotel mapping is the tool that solves this problem, which has been going on for many years.
So, let us jump in and look at how hotel mapping is the key to a better and more efficient way of generating hotel listings.
What is hotel mapping?
The term “Hotel mapping” refers to the process of amalgamating the details of various properties from different sources and listing them in such a way that prevents the duplication and inconsistency of data.
Many online travel agents source their data from many channels to ensure a variety of content. However, the collected data is most of the time inaccurate and inconsistent due to duplication and overlap between different lists sets and, that’s where hotel mapping comes into play.
It is a travel technology service that integrates all the hotel properties for the specified location gathered from several sources in a systematic manner that will help to avoid inconsistency and duplication in hotels.
Hotel mapping records several details about the property that is essential for data collection and presentation. Address, zip code, geolocation, contact info, and general policies are some of the examples of such details accumulated by hotel mapping.
Why do you need hotel mapping tools?
As the demand increases, more and more different properties are entering the market, elevating the number of choices for a user to choose from. Furthermore, as online travel agents compile their list from a big data network of many sources, processing these enormous amounts of data becomes next to impossible. Hence, travel technology solutions become a necessity.
Now, only a fraction of companies prefers to use manual data processing for hotel content mapping. Benefiting the strides the technology has made, today, hotel mapping is a fully automated process that harnesses the powers of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other AI subsets to deliver efficient yet consistent results.
These tools are capable of interpreting a large sum of data gathered through different channels and processing it in such a way that prevents any inconsistency or misrepresentation in information.
How do hotel mapping tools work?
As we stated before, hotel mapping tools use technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver prevailing results and datasets. There are several hotel mapping tools you can use to refine your data and filter out repeating property IDs. Every hotel mapping tool has a different way of operating and processing the data it contains. Some of these tools are mentioned below.
Gimmonix
Gimmonix is a Travel Technology Company that largely focuses on technological solutions for the travel sector. They provide fully automated cloud-based solutions that have a priority on the accuracy of data. Gimmonix commits to deliver mapping services that guarantee to increase productivity as well as revenue with the help of their API connectivity and automized mapping solutions.
In fact, they provide a 99 percent accurate assurance of their data just within a timeframe of 24 hours.
DataBinR
DataBindR is another hotel and accommodation mapping company that provides travel technology solutions via Machine learning. DataBindR commits to eliminate syntactic errors with the help of their specialized algorithms solely targeted to the hotel and accommodation sector. However. DataBindR does not use manual processing.
DataBindR offers two solutions to its clients for hotel data mapping.
HotelMappR
HotelMappR used its customized HotelBindR REST API to process and integrate the client’s hotel catalog. The client must provide the data in a CSV or Excel format for processing.
RoomMappR
Where HotelMappR processes properties via its API, RoomMappR processes the information of specific rooms of a property by giving them a unique BindID which can later be combined with the hotel portfolio.
GIATA
GIATA is arguably the largest hotel mapping provider in the business with a hotel catalog containing more than 1,024,000 properties. Came into existence in 1996, the company provides services to online travel agencies and hotels by providing personal ID’d to properties and mapping them with its smartly engineered API.
Juniper Unique Hotel
Juniper Unique Hotel is a service provider that focuses on hotel and travel business solutions. It is a company based in Spain that offers its expertise to different OTAs and hotel booking websites.
Unlike other hotel mapper tools that work via customized APIs, Juniper features an advanced booking engine that integrates the features of hotel mapping.
What are the benefits of hotel mapping tools?
Improves revenue generation
Hotel mapping can directly affect the sales and revenue of your website. It can unify as well as simplify hotel content in the most efficient way possible. This can directly affect the user traffic and revenue generation of the website, as visitors will get a unified listing according to their demands with minimum confusion in hand.
Regular updates and modifications
Hotel mapping is not just a one-time process. Mapping includes a constant need for updating new properties and eliminating the old ones. This keeps the hotel catalog fresh and updated and the users can access the best and most recent hotel listings easily.
Error-free collection of data
The primary function of hotel mapping and hotel mapping tools is to provide a unified, simple, and properly mapped collection of data using advanced technical resources. This allows the users to get a smooth experience on the website without scratching their eyes out.
Conclusion
Hotel mapping has simplified the hotel booking process, not only for the users but for the website owners as well. Without it, delivering ease of booking might not be the piece of cake it is now. It aligns the hotel inventory and delivers a high-performing product, benefiting both customers as well as owners.
If you are also looking for hotel mapping solutions or want to know more about hotel content mapping and travel technology services, you can visit our Travel Technology Services Company page and know all about it. You can also shoot an email to info@hashstudioz.com.
FAQs
Is hotel mapping necessary?
Yes, hotel mapping is an important part of hotel websites and online travel agents. Providing a hassle-free experience to your users is one of the key aspects, and without hotel mapping, this might not always be possible.
Can hotel mapping help in business growth?
Hotel mapping is a fantastic way to streamline your hotel content and eliminate the inconsistent and overlapping of property. This greatly impacts customer satisfaction and eventually pushes the visitors through the sales funnel.
Is automation mapping better than manual mapping?
Definitely! Mapping through automation is leaps and bounds ahead of manual mapping. Besides the tremendous manpower it takes, manual mapping is prone to more errors because of human intervention. Whereas the automation process is achieved through machine learning and AI tools that are fast and error-free.
