Not NAP! I said MAP, with an “m”.

Travel and tourism folks, be advised: everyone wants a map of your area. Everyone. And there’s little debate as to whether you should use digital or dead trees.

Use both.

Provide digital maps for their ease of use. Provide paper maps for their familiarity. Just as long as you are the navigator, the one that shows up with map-in-hand.

But since we’re primarily digital guys, we want to focus on those. I personally think everyone can use them. And below are 5 reasons why:

Layers
One great benefit of having maps online is being able to layer activities and destinations. Almost all the maps that you find online will have some layers that you can add and subtract, giving users the ability to refine their browsing as they search. Also, it’s a way for readers to aggregate information the way they want to. Here’s a good example (with cool auto zoom!) from the Butler County, Ohio CVB.

Personality
Maps don’t have to be just the same old boring, “here’s how to get from A to B”. Modern marketing is all about drilling down and communicating with your audience, right? Well, use your map to help do that. Check out this map from the Kansas Sampler Foundation. Chicken Fried steak map? You bet.

Membership
Maps are great ways to give members of your organization more exposure than just their write up on your page. For businesses, a map can help increase visibility for service partnerships. For DMOs, it’s a great way to showcase your area and at the same time provide more value to businesses you work with. Here’s a map of state parks in the region that we did last year for the Southern West Virginia CVB. On this site, we went with a separate map for every member category.

Tons Of Info
Another reason you need maps: They can share an amazing amount of info over a wide variety of categories, with locations thrown in gratis. Ever try to do that with text? I can tell you, it sucks. And I’m a writer. Give me a map any day. Don’t believe it? Check out this map of the northern U.S. and Canadian Rockies, and imagine trying to display all that information with just words.

Off The Beaten Path
Maps are being introduced with more and more functionality, including online maps that go way beyond driving directions. Many DMO’s have good reason to create all kinds of maps that get to the road (or path) less traveled, and now it’s easy. Or easier. These excellent examples of hiking maps from Backpacker Magazine are interesting, informative, and provide exactly the kind of content their readers expect. Tourism operators can be thinking of ways they can do the same thing.

Three big key points to keep in mind for tourism maps:

• Google is king for functionality.

Non-tech folks can make simple maps for themselves and embed them easily, and more functionality can be added by pros.

• Drill down as much as possible when you create your layers.

Go for specifics; it will appeal to a smaller audience, but it’ll include more people who are really interested (as with most new media).

• Geotag everything.

The more information you have associated with a piece of content, the easier it will be for people to find you, and find what they’re looking for. Here’s the wiki on geotagging.

So, those are some of the ways people are thinking about maps. How about you? Feel free to share some examples.
Big thanks to #tourismchat and Anne Hornyak for the inspiration for this post, and for all the participants for providing links. #tourism chat is on Twitter every other Thursday at 3pm EST.