Hotel Maps
Information is the key to finding a great hotel, and what better way to find hotels than "by eye"? Before you travel, imagine flying over your destination and seeing exactly where all of the best hotels are located. By cross-referencing the 4Hotels.us accommodations database with technology provided by Google Maps, this hotel map directory allows travelers to do just that. View US cities by air, and instantly target a place to stay in a convenient part of town. Some visitor favorites include our hotel map of New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Orlando and (of course) our Las Vegas hotel map. [more]
update: we've added more than 2000 new properties to our database, bringing our total mapped hotels to over 25,000. Thank you to all the visitors who have helped us grow over the past few years.
So what's this all about?
GeoTagging (as explained by Wikipedia)
GeoTagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding, is the process of adding geographical identification to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and place names.
Geocoding also refers to the process of taking non-coordinate based geographical identifiers, such as a postal address, and converting them into geographic coordinates.
GeoTagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information. For instance, one can find images taken near a given location by entering a latitude and longtitude into a GeoTagging-enabled image search engine. GeoTagging-enabled information services can also potentially be used to find news, websites, or other resources. Sites like Flickr and del.icio.us allow users to add metadata to an information resource via a set of tags.
Satellite Images
Want to see what your favorite destination looks like in real life? Check out the US using Google Map's satellite view, which gives you access to satellite and aerial images of locations that you can zoom in, zoom out, or pan in any direction. (You won't experience any long reload times when you drag images in the satellite view, either.)
Hybrid Aerial Maps
Using our hotel maps' default hybrid view, visitors are also able to view superimposed map data–including streets, street names, and landmarks–over these aerial satellite images. Not only do you see the area's geography, but the roads and interstates are clearly marked, giving you unique insight into the property's true environment.
Hotel Map Overlays
The overlay is the culmination of this process. This is where the geotagged hotels are combined with the hybrid satellite map, where they are noted as icons pointing to places on the map. These electronic "pins" move when you drag or zoom the map and when you switch map projections (such as when you switch from Hybrid to Map or Satellite only mode). When you click each of these overlay icons, an information window appears, containing relevant information. In the future, different items like attraction tickets and local photos will also be geotagged and located within this same series of hotel maps.
Relevant resources