Hotel Mapping Accuracy vs. Coverage – What’s More Important?

The modern global market is an extensive mix of various factors that are continuously interacting with each other in an ever-increasing manner. It is important that the various entities that are involved in the global market understand the various internal and external factors that are affecting it in order to make the most out of the market. Rapid developments in travel and communication technology have enabled travel businesses to expand their borders into markets that were previously inaccessible. Therefore, if one business is not taking advantage of the various trends and factors that are affecting the global market as a whole, then they are effectively losing business and as a result, profits.

The scenario of the modern travel and hospitality industry is no different. If you are a travel and hospitality business that is either providing hotel content to other entities or are consolidating content from different sources, the lack of a global standard is evident. There are no laws that dictate the way that properties are being listed across various platforms that leads to inconsistencies and therefore, an overall loss in the number of conversions.

As a result, there is a dire need for travel agencies as well as suppliers to consolidate their content from various data points in order to ensure that there are no inconsistencies when it comes to content that is listed on their platform so as to avoid duplications. Hotel Mapping as a service has evolved over the years with the evolution of travel tech in order to meet these demands that have become a necessity over the years. As people are becoming more dependent on technology for accessing all their daily needs, there is a need for suppliers and travel agencies to also adopt these newer technologies in order to make their services more accessible to the end-users.

According to Marvel Puri, VP, Business Development, Vervotech, “Companies are processing more than a billion data points every day, and each data point is adding to the algorithm learning and accuracy. Accuracy ensures that each one of these data points is readily verified and listed without any inconsistencies so that end-users are presented with proper and updated listings.”

“Traditional hotel mapping technologies are using cross table mapping that may give you accuracy but very low coverage. A low coverage impacts the access to cheaper rooms and much more”, he added.

So, What is Accuracy and Coverage in Hotel Mapping?

One of the biggest challenges faced by the travel fraternity is the lack of any global standard when it comes to distributing content. Each channel focuses on its own set of rules when distributing content and this makes it extremely hard for suppliers to consolidate the data that is being sent out. This is where mapping accuracy comes into effect – accuracy in hotel mapping ensures that the data that is being collected from multiple sources are being represented consistently in any given platform so as to avoid confusion and duplication.

Similarly, coverage in hotel mapping refers to the amount of hospitality data that is being covered by any given platform. Since the travel and hospitality industry is quite extensive, there is a need for systems to cover each and every supplier of hotel data in order to ensure that the data that is being represented is complete. If the data is not completely represented, then there is a chance of inconsistencies rising from the same.

Therefore, it can be clearly deduced that accuracy and coverage are two dependent and interrelated variables where one cannot be clearly established without the other. Without coverage, one cannot guarantee accuracy and vice-versa. In order to properly understand this problem statement better, let’s look at some of the challenges that are being faced by travel agencies as a whole.

Some of the challenges that are faced by suppliers and travels agencies presently are:

• The lack of standardization in descriptive hotel content such as names, addresses, geocodes, star ratings, amenities, and images.
• Complexity in Hotel ID Mapping when it comes to working with multiple content sources.
• Complexity in integration with multiple content sources
• A lack of focus on price when considering competitiveness, coverage, and accuracy
• There is no single reliable source of data
• Lack of automated technologies that are able to manage and consolidate large volumes of hotel content via formats such as XML, API, FTP, Feed, Excel files, and other data formats

It has been established through years of research and simulation that cross table mapping is a multi-step process, i.e., the travel businesses usually send their data to a data management company which then converts that content into their own set of codes which are then represented in a huge XLS table. This process alone, if not automated, can take up to a month depending on the type of data that is being consolidated. This mapped data that is consolidated is then sent to the various travel businesses for sale on their marketplace.

Therefore, it is evident that when a travel business is working with multiple suppliers, then the internal staff needs to manually map the mapped data across all the different supplier’s inventory so as to ensure consistencies across their marketplace. An automated AI-dependent algorithm that instantly maps the data that is being consolidated across various supplier points will readily fasten up the process of mapping.

So, what do companies actually focus on?

Accuracy or coverage?

Various studies have shown that when it comes to hotel mapping, accuracy and coverage are two sides of the same coin. The need for accuracy actually is directly proportional to coverage, so the more area that you cover under your territory, the higher is the need for accuracy, considering that the inconsistencies within listings in properties increase with the increase in density.

Vervotech Hotel Mapping is a revolutionary new platform that leverages the power of AI and ML in order to ensure coverage of 98% coupled with an accuracy of 99.99% so that you are certain that all listings that are posted on your marketplace are consistent as well as updated to the minute. As discussed, as accuracy and coverage are two sides of the same coin, focusing on one single aspect does not really work out in the long run. It is important that companies invest in technologies that ensure both accuracy as well as coverage are adopted by modern businesses in order to ensure that these challenges are accurately met.

If you are a travel agency or a supplier of hotel content data, click here to learn more about the ways that Vervotech Mappings can drive your system towards higher accuracy and coverage through a simple integration of our API into your existing system.