Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about hotel property matching with the Mapping API.
Product
What is hotel property matching?
Hotel property matching links hotel listings across different distribution systems, OTAs, GDSs, wholesalers, to the same physical property. The same hotel may appear as 'Hilton Paris Opera' on one OTA and 'Hilton Paris Opéra' on another with entirely different IDs. Matching resolves these discrepancies so your systems share a single unified ID.
Who is Mapping for?
Any team working with accommodation inventory from more than one source: OTAs, bedbanks and wholesalers, channel managers, metasearch, short-term and vacation rental platforms, and travel apps. Engineers use the API directly; commercial and supply teams rely on the cleaner inventory it produces downstream.
What can I do once every property has one ID?
Deduplicate listings so a hotel shows up once instead of five times. Join rates and availability from different suppliers for the same property. Reconcile your own catalog against new feeds. Compare like for like across sources. The unified ID is the key that makes all of that reliable instead of approximate.
What types of properties can you map?
All accommodation types. Hotels, serviced apartments, hostels, and vacation rentals are resolved to one unified ID the same way. If it shows up across your suppliers, Mapping can identify it.
How is this different from building it ourselves?
Most teams end up maintaining their own matching layer: fuzzy name matching, geo-radius checks, and a growing pile of edge-case rules that break every time a new supplier is added. It is a project that never ends. Mapping is that layer, built once and maintained for you, behind a single API, with 1.9M properties indexed across 230+ countries.
For developers
How do I integrate?
Send a property to the REST API and get back a unified ID with a confidence score. There is no pipeline to build and no model to train. If you are wiring Mapping into an agent or assistant, connect through the MCP server instead. Full documentation is at https://docs.mapping.travel.
What information do I send to map a property?
A property name plus whatever you have to disambiguate it, typically location (address and/or coordinates) and any existing supplier codes. The more signal you send, the higher the confidence.
What does a response look like?
Each match returns a unified property ID, a confidence score, and a match band (HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, or NO_MATCH). See the API reference at https://docs.mapping.travel for the exact response schema.
How long does integration take?
Minutes, not a quarter. It is a single call and response with no infrastructure to stand up on your side, so most teams resolve their first properties the same day they get access.
Are there rate limits?
Limits are on the number of mappings, not the request rate. The free tier covers 2 mappings per day; paid tiers raise that allowance for higher volume and production workloads.
How long does it take to map a full hotel portfolio?
Most portfolios complete in under 4 hours via the batch CSV API. You submit your hotel list with names, locations, and any existing supplier codes; the API processes them asynchronously and returns matched IDs with confidence scores. For large enterprise portfolios (1M+ properties), dedicated processing is available.
Data and accuracy
How accurate is the matching algorithm?
The Mapping API achieves 95% F1 accuracy on benchmark datasets. Every match returns a confidence score so you always know how reliable each result is.
What is a confidence score, and how do I use it?
Every match comes back with a score and a band (HIGH ≥0.80, MEDIUM ≥0.60, LOW ≥0.54, NO_MATCH). You set the threshold: auto-accept high-confidence matches and route the rest to review. Nothing is a silent yes or no, so questionable matches never quietly enter your inventory.
What happens when there is no confident match?
You get a low score or a clear NO_MATCH rather than a wrong guess. That lets you hold the property for review or enrichment instead of polluting your catalog with a bad link.
Which OTAs and suppliers can I match against?
The database covers the major hotel suppliers, with more added regularly. You can match against a single supplier or all of them in one request. Check the changelog for updates.
How fresh is the data?
The underlying index is updated continuously as properties open, close, or get re-listed, so the IDs you resolve against stay current.
Can I report a wrong match?
Yes. Flag a bad match and we correct it, those corrections feed back into the index, so reporting one improves results for everyone.
Pricing and access
Is the free tier actually production-ready?
Yes. The free tier includes full database access, the complete REST API, and 2 mappings per day with no time limit and no credit card required. It runs on the same infrastructure as paid tiers with the same 99.999% uptime SLA.
How does pricing work as I scale?
The free Basic tier covers 2 mappings per day with no time limit and no credit card. Professional is $120/month or $1,152/year for steady volume. Enterprise adds volume discounts, dedicated support, and custom SLAs.
Still have a question? Contact us or email contact@mapping.travel.