Three months ago, when we were all ushering in 2016, did you resolve to travel more this year? You are not alone. “Travel more” New Year’s resolutions are very popular. With Spring Break upon us, help your fellow travel resolution enthusiasts by adding hotels and other types of lodging to OpenStreetMap.
There is probably a collection of hotels in your local area that you are very familiar with, and there may be a few additional ones that you would like to know more about. This is your chance to do some investigating which could lead to your next staycation or an easier time finding places to put up friends and family when they all decide to visit at once. No doubt there are places you have stayed in the past that left a lasting impression (for better or for worse). Now is your chance to share your local knowledge from around town, or towns you have visited over the years.
Our last few posts in this series are showing us how business listings and other points of interest are slowly gaining momentum in OpenStreetMap. Curious to know how prevalent hotels, motels, hostels, and other forms of lodging are in OpenStreetmap? Check out this table which includes our New Year’s Resolutions cities, but this time we are including phone numbers instead of hours since many lodging options recieve guests at any hour. Go ahead and click the headers to sort the table!
| Lodging Features | with Addresses | with Website | with Phone Number | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland | 131 | 7% | 2% | 1% |
| Dublin | 321 | 36% | 38% | 21% |
| Hong Kong | 752 | 39% | 10% | 9% |
| Melbourne | 254 | 39% | 54% | 24% |
| Mexico City | 172 | 17% | 11% | 13% |
| Mumbai | 251 | 4% | 4% | 6% |
| San Francisco | 342 | 53% | 33% | 27% |
| São Paulo | 270 | 44% | 24% | 27% |
| Seoul | 955 | 5% | 4% | 4% |
| Singapore | 428 | 38% | 24% | 20% |
| Stockholm | 485 | 12% | 46% | 27% |
| Vancouver | 92 | 63% | 22% | 17% |
Wow! So many lodging options in Seoul, but so few associated attributes. This is an amazing opportunity for editors. For websites and phone numbers, Melbourne and Stockholm are leading the pack, with Melbourne edging out Stockholm just a bit with it’s additional address details. A street address on a feature adds so much value for many types of map services.
Helpful Tags
If you are behind in your vacation planning, get inspired by adding or enhancing lodging related businesses in OpenStreetMap! Need some help choosing tags? Here are some suggestions which link to their corresponding OpenStreetMap wiki pages:
- name=*
- addr:housenumber=*
- Polygons to represent the entire grounds:
- tourism=hotel traditionally full service hotels.
- tourism=motel traditionally smaller hotels with parking in front of each room.
- tourism=hostel traditionally lower cost lodging with shared communal spaces.
- tourism=chalet small cottages with basic accomodations.
- Points or polygons to represent the buildings
- building=*
- examples: building=hotel, building=motel, building=hostel, etc
- website=*
- phone=*
Where to Start
Do you travel for business and stay at the same hotels regularly? Enhance those first. Do you have go-to hotels you suggest when people are visting from out of town? Save those details in OpenStreetMap for future retrieval. Maybe you had a particularly memorable time at the places you booked for your last vacation. Are they represented in OpenStreetMap?
Interactive Map
Would it be helpful to see where the current lodging related features are in OpenStreetMap? There’s a map for that! Hover over any of the bright blue highlighted features to bring up an info bubble with links to editing tools that can be used to add additional tags. (While you pan and zoom to your neighborhood, note that larger lodging features show up at zoom level 15, and many more show up at zoom 16.)
This map is interactive! Open full screen ➹
If you’re not familiar with Vancouver, search for your city! Is your go-to hotel missing all together? Shift-click anywhere on the map to open iD or open your favorite OpenStreetMap editor to start mapping!
If you are trying to decide between creating a point or a polygon to represent a feature, a point is great when the lodging is in a building that contains other businesses and/or residences. If your lodging occupies the entire building, digitize a building polygon if it doesn’t already exist and add your tags to it.
Look for more posts in the New Year’s Resolution series soon!
Getting Started with OpenStreetMap
Need instructions on how to edit with iD? Here are some links to outstanding tutorials from LearnOSM, the OpenStreetMap wiki, and the United States Department of State’s Humanitarian Information Unit:
Are you a mapping wiz and interested in a more advanced editor? Try out JOSM with excellent documentation from Mapbox.
Editing with a Mobile Device
With points of interest, I bet you are interested in a mobile app to edit OpenStreetMap while you are on the go.
iOS users can check out Go Map!! by Bryce Cogswell. This free editor allows you to add features and edit existing features. Check out the Go Map!! wiki page for more details. Pushpin by Fulcrum is another excellent iOS editor for OpenStreetMap points of interest.
Looking for an Android equivalent? Vespucci by Marcus Wolschon is a great option. Check out the Vespucci home page for documentation and tutorials.
Get outside, increase your local knowledge, and share it with the world through your OpenStreetMap edits!
Check out all the posts in the Targeted Editing series:
