Imagine this: you’re gearing up for an upcoming long weekend. You have the dates & the destination; all you need is a hotel reservation. So, you visit ‘ABC’ hotel booking website but get confused when you see the same hotel listed four times at different prices.
For the next few minutes, you spend time on the website scouring hotels, get confused with multiple results of the same hotel, get frustrated, and eventually move on to another hotel booking website.
Now, look at this scenario as the business owner of ‘ABC hotel booking website’. With multiple hotel listings of the same hotel, your customers go through a bad booking experience, and you lose a potential customer.
Now, imagine if the hotel listings on your website were error-free, with no duplications and standardized content. That would certainly make the hotel booking experience quite seamless for your website visitors.
‘Hotel Mapping’ is what helps you achieve this seamless website experience.
Read on as we introduce you to the concept of hotel mapping.
Understanding Hotel Mapping
‘Hotel mapping’ is the process of merging multiple listings of the same property sourced from various sources, known as ‘suppliers’ into a single property, and assigning it a unique ‘id’ to avoid inconsistent naming and duplication in listings.
Duplications and inconsistent listings happen when an OTA or travel agency sources information from two or more providers, from channels like bed banks, channel managers, GDSs, or other larger OTAs.
How Does Hotel Mapping Work?
Hotel Mapping can be done manually, but that can be extremely time-consuming and complex. Most OTAs opt for AI-powered Hotel Mapping solutions to get the job done with ease.
This helps travel businesses achieve high customer satisfaction by aiming to prevent end-users from booking the wrong hotel and nullify losses resulting from the same.
Let’s understand how it works this with an example:
Suppliers- Beds&Beds and HotelBookings.com have different IDs and names for the properties they push to distributors.
The hotel property can be called, say, Luxury Inn in Beds&Beds and Luxury Hotel & Casino in HotelBookings.com.
To map these listings, the Hotel mapping API sifts through a set of static attributes such as hotel names, policies, reviews, ratings, and geolocation to find identical properties and merge them under a unique ID.
In a nutshell, hotel mapping reduces duplicate hotel listings by standardizing hotel details, such as contact information, address, ZIP code, descriptions, Geo-location, policies, etc.
Why is Hotel Mapping Important for OTAs?
Hotel mapping allows online travel businesses to streamline their operations and enhance customer trust. It organizes fragmented data from multiple sources into unique data, thus resolving issues like duplicate listings and inconsistent hotel details.
This, in turn, ensures customers receive accurate, reliable information, reducing booking errors and cancellations.
For OTAs, mapping simplifies inventory management by integrating data from GDS, property management systems, and suppliers, keeping listings up-to-date and boosting conversions. It also reduces operational overhead, allowing OTAs to focus on delivering personalized travel solutions and staying competitive in the dynamic travel industry.
Benefits of Hotel Mapping for Different Stakeholders
Hotel mapping offers significant advantages across the travel ecosystem, benefiting travelers, OTAs, and hoteliers alike.
For Travelers, it ensures access to accurate hotel details, enabling them to make informed decisions. Simplified comparisons of hotels across various platforms save time and reduce confusion.
For suppliers, hotel mapping ensures that their inventory is presented accurately across multiple travel booking platforms by reducing misinterpretation and duplication. It also helps them maintain consistency, improving their collaboration with the OTAs.
For Bedbanks like Hotelbeds and WebBeds, hotel mapping ensures the seamless grouping of hotel inventory, preventing duplicate listings and improving the reliability of data shared with OTAs and suppliers. This improves operational efficiency and helps boost their adoption rates.
Take Away
Ensuring that your hotel listings are accurate is the best chance you have of making your online travel business competitive. Hotel mapping solutions help you unify the content, improve the quality and accuracy of the data you present on your travel booking platform and, ultimately, increase customer satisfaction.
Does your travel booking business require mapping services? Explore Vervotech’s hotel & room mapping solutions today!
About Vervotech:
Vervotech is a leading Hotel Mapping and Room Mapping API that leverages the power of AI and ML to quickly and accurately identify each property listing through the verification of multiple parameters. With One of the industry’s best coverage of 98% and an accuracy of 99.999%, Vervotech is quickly becoming the mapping software of choice for all leading global companies operating in the travel and hospitality industry. To learn more about Vervotech and the ways it can enhance your business in the long run contact us: sales@vervotech.com
