An updated version of travel search engine Kayak.com provides Google Maps of hotel locations and lets users add hotels to the index.
Kayak has made a few changes to its travel search, allowing visitors to suggest hotels that do not appear in its listings. They call it the “Every Hotel on Earth” program in a press release.
The company provides a link from its Hotels page. Clicking on Tell Us’ brings up a simple form to provide hotel name, location, and contact details. Users can further edit submitted listings with their comments about a property.
“Kayak.com has added more than 600 new hotels to our search since introducing this to our home page nearly two months ago,” said Drew Patterson, Kayak’s director of business development, in the statement. Also, Kayak sells an expanded listing for $99 annually for hotels that wish to further enhance their Kayak entries.
The company said it is using maps from Google and Mapquest to help compare the location of multiple hotels on one map. Some tweaking may be needed on the Google Map side, as it places an icon for the Courtyard by Marriott Orlando-Maitland property off the western coast of Africa, on the Equator.
Kayak listed other updated functionality in its press release:
• Dynamic hotel counter that shows how many hotels are available based on the user’s specific search criteria.
• Improved filters that sort hotels based on specific preferences such as price, amenities (bar, fitness center, Internet, etc.), location (including a city’s specific neighborhoods), star rating and brand.
• Links to relevant information such as restaurants, shopping, taxis, markets and more.
• All recent hotel searches will be saved for easy user reference at a later date.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
