Bestwestern blog

Google driving hotels overboard into the sea

Posted by Jason

We have just spotted a major anomaly in our Google Places accounts that is keeping us entertained here at Best Western Hotels.

Several of our hotels (which have been setup correctly in terms of postcode) have been summarily dumped into the Atlantic Ocean by Google!

These hotels have been submitted by bulk upload as usual but a gremlin in the Google Places system has resulted in their longitude being set as zero.

This is a confusing situation for the user who, expecting to stay at the Best Western Atlantic Hotel, Chelmsford will be literally in the Atlantic, Ocean! Even a Compass has been of no use to the team at Google as the Best Western Compass Inn is floating off the African coast!

Google Places Error Best Western Atlantic Hotel

Or what about those poor folks intending to stay in sleepy Harrow for the weekend – they’re now looking at bedding down just off the coast of Liberia!

To fix this issue we could send in our Best Western Ship Hotel, Weybridge to the rescue or similarly the Best Western Admiral Rodney to help his stranded hoteliers. However, probably the best bet is to manually edit your location marker in your Google Places account, overriding Google’s targeting (see below).

All hands are on deck here implementing this fix this for our hotels.

Manually edit your location marker for your hotel in your Google Places account

If you are staying in one of our hotels stuck in the middle of the Atantic on Google Maps don’t worry – you are only digitally stranded at sea and you do have more than a a porthole for a view.  However, we would recommend checking out of your window before venturing out just in case the boffins at Google know something we don’t. Otherwise, we’ll see you in the lifeboat!

Jason Munslow, Best Western Hotels.

Jason

A family man and a keen traveller, Jason is head of all things digital at Best Western head office.