September 9, 2011
By Editor

In a recent trip to Istanbul, I booked my hotel using the method I would expect many do., the photos on the Hotel’s website. Conceivably this may have been an amateur’s mistake. The hotel was in a slightly rough part of town, with many of those images very clearly photo-shopped beyond very well by the creators of the site. Somewhat lost in a foreign country (and discovering the hotel’s restaurant was non-existent), I hit the latest version of Nokia Maps for some much needed guidance.

By turning on the heat mapping layer on Nokia Maps you get an instant feel for an area – the site groups places of interest into categories and displays their density in vivid colour. The darker the colour, the higher the density. Heat mapping confirmed my thoughts that my hotel was not in the idea location, indicated by a lack of colour in the surrounding areas. However, after a little bit of searching, I quickly located the buzz in the town. The street in bright red was littered with restaurants. A short taxi ride and I was thrown into the hustle and bustle of the city’s nightlife.

Next time there’ll be no rookie mistakes. I’ll be sure to use Nokia Maps to find the best hotel location. I might even take advantage of the functionality to book directly from the maps itself! Yes, Nokia Maps can do that.

About Nokia Maps heat mapping:

Heat mapping is an overlay that shows you a darker red colour for more popular – or POI dense – places, with the orange and yellow colours representing the less dense places.

To achieve this visualisation and not have every single POI on the map, Nokia selected some of the premium POIs. This is because people can add their own public place to the map which saves to the directory, and we wouldn’t want to spend the day visiting other people’s houses or offices. The premium POIs are provided from services, such as Lonely Planet, WCities and Michelin to name a few, and these bring reviews and some great photos, too.