Your eye in the sky - Online Travel - Times Online

location based services

Years of worrying about whether the hotel you’ve booked is really as close to the beach as it says in the brochure could be about to end — that is, if you have the right computer.
Thomson Holidays, the country’s largest tour operator, is introducing technology on its website that will allow holidaymakers to see close-up satellite views of individual hotels at most resorts.
Working with Google Earth, an internet service that provides satellite pictures, the company has already introduced shots that cover its main Mediterranean resorts. But soon it will have detailed pictures of hotels that will allow people to judge for themselves how close they are to the beach.
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Relying on vague descriptions such as “the beach is a short walk away” and “golden sands are just across the road” will become a thing of the past, if other mass-market operators make satellite shots a travel industry standard.
Graham Donoghue, head of new media at Thomson, said: “People want to see exactly how close they will be. When a brochure says, ‘it’s so far from the beach’, many people think: but is it really?” He believes that the technology will be available within the next 12 months as Thomson collects satellite shots of its hotels. The service could be adapted to show where restaurants, bars and other attractions are in relation to hotels. Thomson has already introduced a link to Google Earth on its website, promising “a planet’s worth of imagery right on your doorstep”.
First Choice and MyTravel, the second and third-largest UK tour operators, are considering similar schemes. First Choice says that it is monitoring the scheme, while MyTravel says that it “might consider something like that, we’re always looking for something new”.
More than 55 million people across the globe have signed up to Google Earth, a free service that requires computers to have broadband connections.
Dan Robb, head of travel for UK at Google, said: “I think it’s important that consumers are able to see exactly what they want to buy before they do.”
Thomson has introduced more than 1,500 videos of resorts, which customers with broadband can watch. Downloads to video iPods will be available from next month.
Details: Thomson (www. thomson.co.uk), First Choice (www.firstchoice.co.uk), MyTravel (www.mytravel.
co.uk), Google Earth (http://earth.google.com).