In Google’s Lat Long Blog Google has recently announced they will be experimenting with the inclusion of Hotel prices in the Google Maps section.
Google Maps through Google’s Local Business Listing function is often one of the first point of calls when someone is looking for a hotel in a specific location, by including the price of the hotel room in the listing Google is continuing to follow its business objective of keeping more searchers on it’s search platform for longer.
2am carries out Google Maps optimisation for a number of clients including hotels in different areas and we know how competitive this area can be. For example there are thousands of hotels in London all competing on Google Maps for the search term “London Hotels” but only 7 listings are displayed in the maps section in the SERPS – if they are displaying the price maybe the user data Google collects from click throughs will make the listings more competitive on price rather than on the optimisation of the categories and descriptions in the Local Business Listing.
Google state: “This new feature will not change the way that hotels are ranked in Google Maps. Google Maps ranks business listings based on their relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance (where indicated) and other factors, regardless of whether there is an associated price.” but I can’t help but wonder if we are moving more and more closer to a paid for Local Business Listing.
Read the blog by Google at: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/experiment-to-show-hotel-prices-on.html