In the dynamic world of online travel booking, room mapping emerges as a crucial component. In the dynamic world of online travel booking, room mapping emerges as a crucial component.
What is room mapping?
The modern traveler uses online platforms to find the perfect accommodation, but behind this convenience lies a complex system. Room mapping is the intricate process of identifying records of rooms from diverse sources and matching them when they correspond to the same physical hotel room. In layman’s terms, it’s about ensuring that similar rooms, sourced from different suppliers but describing the same physical room, are recognized and presented as one.
The Twin Pillars: Hotel and Room Mapping
To understand room mapping, we first need to briefly touch upon its counterpart – hotel mapping. As Online Travel Agents (OTAs) collect hotel data from various sources like bed banks and global distribution systems, discrepancies arise. Different sources may list the same hotel under different IDs. The result? Customers see repeated listings, causing confusion. Hotel mapping works to aggregate these listings, removing duplicates and providing clarity.
Yet, where hotel mapping focuses on the entire establishment, room mapping drills down to individual rooms. Consider this: two suppliers provide lists for the same hotel. One lists a “Superior King Room with Balcony” while the other presents a “Superior Room, 1 King-Size Bed, Balcony”. Both descriptions, though different, refer to the exact same room. Herein lies the essence of room mapping – ensuring such identical rooms are linked.
The Crucial Need for Room Mapping
In our increasingly globalized world, OTAs pull data from myriad suppliers. Without room mapping, customers may see slight variations in room descriptions, causing confusion and potential loss of trust. Room mapping ensures your platform provides the most competitive prices for the unique rooms available, enhancing user experience.
How is it Achieved?
At the heart of room mapping is breaking down a room description into recognizable attributes. By understanding these attributes, a room description can be standardized. Consequently, potential duplicates are identified and removed, ensuring that rooms are presented accurately according to user preferences.
Attribute
Description
Example
Type
Room’s base type
Room, Suite, Apartment, Villa
Class
Room’s class
Standard, Deluxe, Superior
View
Room’s view
Ocean, Pool, Garden, Mountain
Feature
Room’s specific feature
Private Pool, Balcony, Terrace
BedType
Type of bed
Queen, King
Etc.
Why Proper Mapping Matters
Accuracy and Trust: Duplicate listings, outdated data, or even missed listings can confuse potential customers. This confusion can shake user trust, possibly leading to decreased bookings.
Up-to-date Information: Hotels undergo changes. Operating with old or erroneous listings might result in disillusioned customers when their experiences don’t align with their expectations.
Optimized Revenue Streams: Failing to display all available rooms translates to missed booking opportunities, reducing potential income.
Look-to-Book Ratio and Profit Margins: Different suppliers can offer the same room at varying rates due to their unique agreements with hotels. Proper mapping ensures showcasing competitive rates, enhancing conversions, and emphasizing offers with better profit margins.
The Cupid Difference
In the intricate realm of mapping, Cupid stands apart. Our platform is meticulously designed to harness the power of machine learning for enhancing hotel and room mapping. Our objective is simple yet ambitious: reduce human error to achieve impeccable listings. This is how we differ:
Cupid’s hotel mapping solution:
Precision and Efficiency: We pride ourselves on achieving top precision (99.9%), recall (98.5%), and coverage (98%).
Rapid Results: Our system can process 100,000 mappings in a mere 5 minutes.
User-Friendly Interface: Intuitive design ensures ease of use.
Automated End-to-End: The mapping process is fully automated, paired with open APIs.
Limitless Potential: With no LookUp tables, our mapping scope is expansive, accommodating new hotels and vacation rentals alike.
Real-time Insights: We offer actionable analytics in real-time for optimal decision-making.
Cupid’s room mapping solution:
Rich Data Source: Our solution draws from an expansive collection of over 400 million room descriptions, spanning more than 180 suppliers.
Data Purity: We provide standardized, structured, and detailed data, effectively eliminating redundancy and errors.
Business Customization: Enjoy the flexibility to group room types based on distinct business requirements.
Swift API: A quick and user-friendly API that operates in under 300ms.
Detailed Room Attributes: We extract key room features, like non-smoking specifications, to enrich website displays.
In the vast, intricate landscape of hotel and room mapping, Cupid emerges as a beacon of reliability. Our platform is not just a tool; it’s a comprehensive solution that emphasizes automation, precision, and business enhancement.
Conclusion
In the bustling world of online travel businesses, proper hotel and room mapping are not just a luxury but a necessity. As the industry grows and evolves, the demand for accuracy and clarity increases. Platforms like Cupid pave the way, ensuring businesses remain competitive, efficient, and trusted by their users.
Want to experience the difference? Book a meeting with one of our hotel mapping experts or start a free trial with Cupid today.
