If you are a visual person, we have some good news for you. You can use FindOptimal to find hotels on a map. Furthermore, FindOptimal offers many heat maps and overlays to help you identify the best hotel for you.
Map Views and Markers
Similar to other popular hotel search websites, FindOptimal can display the recommended hotel properties on a map. We chose the powerful Google map because it offers the best street view. If you drag and drop the Pegman icon at the bottom-right corner to the location of your target hotel, you will get a real-life view of the area.
We label the hotel properties with numbered icons from Map Icons Collection. We also mark the destinations with letters when you input multiple locations. If you hover your mouse over a hotel label, a hotel information window will pop up with a picture browser. Note that the items will be highlighted in bold and in green when the hotel meets some of your criteria. If you hover over a destination mark, you will see the address as well as an image of that location in a pop up window.
Overlays and Heat Maps
Different from other hotel search web sites, FindOptimal provides a lot of overlays in the Map view, including Safety Index, Population Density, Income per Capita, Business Density, Public Transit Network, Real-time Traffic and Bicycle Path.
At the bottom of the Map view tab, there is a tool bar with a couple of overlay comboboxes. The right combobox contains safety and demographic information. If you select an item from that combobox, a heat map layer reflecting the selected category will be generated on top of the current map view along with hotels and destinations. The heat map uses color scale from green to red. With regard to safety, green indicates less crimes while red means more. As for other demographic and economical indexes, red reflects high numbers while green indicates low numbers.
The left combobox contains some additional useful information for your trip. If you rely on a public metro system, you can select Transit Network to see a metro map in a city. If you worry about traffic from your hotel to airport, you can select Real-time Traffic to check where possible choke points are. Last, you can select Bicycle Paths to see where you can go and have some fun with a bicycle.
Route to the Destination
If the purpose of your trip is to attend a meeting, to join an event or to visit a place, you probably want to search hotels around specific address of the meeting/event venue or the target place. With FindOptimal, you may do so by enter the specific address in the Input panel. After results are returned, you probably also wonder how close a hotel is close to your destination and how you can get there by walking, by driving or with a public transit. FindOptimal provides a convenient way for you to explore routes from hotels to your destination. After selecting “Driving Path”, “Walking Path”, “Transit Path”, or “Bicycling Path” on the bottom toolbar, you may click on each hotel to see the routes from that hotel to your destination. On the left “Info” panel, you may also see a turn-by-turn direction.