If you’re selling hotels online, hotel mapping is a necessity. Nowadays, you can get hotel mapping services from more places than ever before. However, the wealth of options makes the choice all the more difficult. Two of the main criteria that you’ll have to take into consideration when choosing a mapping provider is accuracy and coverage. But that begs the question, between the two of them, what’s more important and why? These are the questions we’re going to be answering below.
What is accuracy in mapping?
When you’re mapping a hotel, there are dozens of criteria that are matched to one another. This information is used to populate different fields in the property’s listing. Such as room images, amenities, cancelation policy, property address, and much much more. The degree to which that information is mapped correctly is what we call ‘accuracy’ in mapping.
Why does accuracy matter?
Accuracy is essential. Without accurate mapping, you have no way of ensuring that what you present is what you’re actually selling. E.g. a customer books a deluxe suite at the Holiday Inn in Los Angeles. That customer thinks that is what they’re booking, when in reality it could be that any number of details are off, from the room type to the particular location. Imagine arriving at a hotel only for them to deny any reservation existing in your name. This is a scenario that countless travelers find themselves in every single day. When properties are mapped accurately, these errors can be prevented.
What is coverage in mapping?
Simply put, coverage is the number of properties you can sell from the total amount provided by your source. That is to say, if, for example, a hotel supplier you work with has 100k properties. If you were to map their properties with 60% coverage, then you’d be able to make 60k properties available for sale. The more sources you work with, the more difficult it becomes to attain a high degree of coverage.
Why does coverage matter?
Each property is a potential booking you could close, and having greater variety in any given city increases the chances of a customer booking on your site. With fewer properties, a customer is likely to look elsewhere for more options and with that, the chance they book with you plummets.
Conclusion
Where accuracy ensures you display details correctly and avoid costly booking errors. It is without value when you’re not even displaying nearly half of your properties.
That’s not a number pulled out of thin air either. The industry average for hotel mapping services and solutions is 65% coverage. That is simply unacceptable when you consider all of the resources that go into securing partnerships with hotel (and other accommodation types) suppliers, from the business side of reaching an agreement to the technical efforts poured into setting up the connection. Ending up with 35% of that inventory you’re paying for to unused, unseen and unsold is nothing short of a scandal.