Maps continues to be one of the Google apps which is constantly improving with some really interesting features. Only recently, offline functionality of Maps was made available, which will be of immense benefit to anyone who needs to get around without having to worry about data charges or a reliable cellular connection. Now it looks like the latest update is getting ready to land on devices and this one again brings with it some useful features. To some, the latest improvements won’t be of much use, as it does depend on how often you find yourself looking for a hotel and from your smartphone and through Maps. Although, for those that do, the latest update brings with it amenity listings for hotels.
Following the update, once you click on to a hotel link in Maps, the listing will display a small selection of what is deemed to be the most essential amenities offered by the hotel. Then below the essential amenities, there will be a link for “More Amenities” which when clicked through will highlight all the known amenities in full. That said, if your preference for amenities boils down to simply the likes of Wi-Fi and Breakfast, then it looks like the update is also designed to bring these extremely essential amenities to the front of the hotel search results. In short, you can easily see whether hotels that show up in the Maps search results offer Wi-Fi and Breakfast before clicking through to any particular hotel. While, this will seem trivial to some, it does reduce the need to click on hotel links only to find out Wi-Fi is not included and instantly back out again.
There are also some additional smaller features included with the update like the ability to scroll in a carousel fashion through images instead of vertically, although the hotel amenities seems to be the biggest and most useful so far noted. The update is in the process of rolling out to devices and chances are a number of users will already have seen it land on their device, in the form of a update to version 9.18. However, if you are one of those who has yet to see the update arrive, then you can always pull the update from the link below and sideload to your device manually.
