How I learned to stop worrying and love automation

Hey there, Andrew here. Let’s talk about hotel mapping. We rely on mapping services to sort our ever changing inventories and provide our customers with a great user experience. It’s something you have to do to sell hotels and anything worth doing takes time and effort; or does it?

Let’s imagine you have two identical refrigerators that broke down for the same reason, and you were to get them repaired by different technicians:

The first technician comes in, takes the fridge apart entirely, reassembles it, and spends the better part of a day fixing it. Once finished, he explains that he doesn’t know what caused it, but nonetheless it’ll work now. He charges you $400 for his work. Now comes the second repairman. Within 10 minutes he tells you that there were several problems with the refrigerator, and he has already finished fixing them all. He also assures you that the fridge will run better than before and charges you $800 for his work.

When it comes to the first technician, you’ll likely feel that you got your money’s worth. But the second one will probably feel like a rip-off. If you really think about it though, the first technician would end up being more expensive in the long-run as he left the underlying problem unsolved. Despite this, most people would still feel more comfortable choosing that option.

As irrational as it is, it’s very common to associate appearing busy to actually being productive. Instinctually, it is easier for us to understand effort and cost of labor when we actually see someone working.

So what does all of this have to do with hotel mapping?

Like the two repairmen, there are multiple hotel mapping options. The most common form of hotel mapping that has also been around the longest is manual mapping. It is quite simply the act of comparing massive spreadsheets to each other by hand. This method is prone to human error, and takes so long that by the time it’s complete much of the inventory is outdated.

There are also mapping providers that have their own set of standardized codes, against which you can manually map your inventory. Once again you have to manually compare to their lists, and you’ll never know what’s missing from your inventory. These lists are usually updated only every few months so here too you’ll be left with dated inventory.

The newest and most efficient option out there is automated mapping. Our mapping solutions at Gimmonix are capable of mapping millions of hotel properties in several hours, and we reach a level of coverage and accuracy that is leaps and bounds above anything else in the industry. This often-times leads people to a very understandable reaction: “How can you spend a fraction of the time it usually takes to map and get anywhere near the same (let alone better) quality, coverage or accuracy?” After all, you can’t see the work that goes into the technology when it’s just a few clicks on the user’s end.

The explanation lies in the ‘Iceberg Theory.’

The basic idea is that we only see the surface of a narrative, or in this case a mapping solution. Underneath, however, the depth can vary deeply. The travel industry as a whole has become accustomed to a manual mapping process that averages 3 months. This process is clearly labor intensive but the upfront cost is typically deemed as getting your money’s worth or acceptable.

When contrasted with Gimmonix’s hotel mapping solution, which can map any inventory volume in under a day with extraordinary precision, our claims can seem suspect. What isn’t apparent above the surface is the $30m invested into our mapping technology, or the decades of combined knowledge poured into making a solution that completely automates all of the heavy lifting associated with mapping, leaving out any room for human error.

So what lies underneath the surface of the mapping solutions we’ve built?

24M Hotel Records Every mapping is checked against this massive database resulting in 99.999% accurate results.

74 Rules & Processes Every mapping is done using AI and a dynamic learning process to cross-reference hotel data, allowing us to achieve 98.7% inventory coverage with an unprecedented 99.999% accuracy.

Error Isolation Mapping errors are further reduced through a rule that separates uncertain inventory from the main mapping files, enabling review and resolution.

Built-in Data Gathering Tools that produce instant analytics and reports, generate information in real-time from each mapping.

Dynamic Processing Power Inventory size is rendered irrelevant to mapping speed using our cloud platform, so expanding hotel supply doesn’t slow you down

What the iceberg boils down to

Just as the car replaced the horse and buggy, automation is now replacing manual tasks. In the travel industry, automated mapping is no longer optional, it’s the standard. With new automated mapping solutions on the market, what remains unseen beneath the surface is all of the complicated inner workings, development through trial and error, and techniques employed to make such complex solutions a reality. When Gimmonix clients use Mapping.Works, our hotel mapping solution, they get mapped results without the need for a team to go through countless spreadsheets day in, day out.

Given these factors and the clientele that’s entrusted their mapping to our capable hands, why not give one of our mapping solutions a try?

Mapping.Works by Gimmonix is trusted by:

Want to learn more about what you can do with better mapping? Visit our website https://gimmonix.com or contact us at info@gimmonix.com