Visitors to www.totaltravel.com.au can access Multimap’s interactive maps, with full zoom in/out, and pan N,S,E,W functionality, in just a few easy steps, wherever they are on the site. From the homepage, they can drill down to the area of interest from the overview map of Australia, select a directory of interest (accommodation, beauty and health, entertainment and eats, attractions and tours, transport and travel, or activities and sports), and click on an item of interest followed by the ‘Map’ button. Alternatively, they can click on a directory of interest on the homepage and proceed as outlined previously, or go straight to a map of the features flagged up on the homepage via a link for each entry.

Baker continued, “We wanted to make the maps as accessible as possible for our users, and, thanks to Multimap’s flexible services and the pervasiveness of links to the maps throughout the site, we’re delighted to say that we’ve achieved this!”

Chris Warrick, Managing Director of Multimap Australasia, said, “totaltravel.com.au provides an immensely helpful resource for people planning accommodation, entertainment and travel options in Australia, and the addition of our online mapping services to the site offers the perfect complement to its existing functionality. Our services are extremely useful to end users, giving them the confidence to proceed to make a booking.”

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About Multimap

Multimap is one of the world’s leading providers of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

  

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 10 million unique users, registers more than 180 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors, as well as in The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 league of fastest-growing unquoted UK technology companies for the third year running.

In the Australian and New Zealand markets, leading companies including Wotif.com.au, Flight Centre.com.au, PropertyLook.com.au, eHound, aussiehome.com, Commercial Real Estate and Colliers International New Zealand, have selected Multimap as their online mapping partner. They tell us that our location-based services not only offer rich content that enhances the user's experience of their sites, but that they also drive people to their real-world locations. Increased footfall through the doors translates easily and quickly to growth in sales. And, thanks to partnerships with key data providers, such as PSMA and Terralink, we offer the most accurate and comprehensive coverage of Australia and New Zealand.

About Totaltravel.com.au

Totaltravel.com.au runs online travel guides for both Australia and (recently launched) the UK. Launched in Australia in 2002 the site now enjoys around 60,000 visitors per day globally (around half of whom are visiting the Australian portal). The Aussie site delivers around 250,000 page views each day! Totaltravel’s approach is different to that of other online accommodation websites in that they do not take a commission on bookings. Rather, they direct the customer through to the businesses own website, enabling them to make a more informed decision on their accommodation or entertainment options. “We cater to the independent traveler who wants to research and plan their own trip without being asked for credit card details every step of the way!”

From an advertisers viewpoint this is a very attractive proposition. For a fixed annual fee (as little as $275) it is possible to completely control the information exposed on the Totaltravel website (via a password protected login) and to monitor the effectiveness of this presence on the site by way of detailed statistics available online, 24 hrs a day. In terms of getting qualified traffic to their websites it is a model that is hard to beat. 4,000 businesses are already using their services and this number is growing by around 50 per week. Totaltravel’s confidence in their model is illustrated by the fact that they are prepared to offer an obligation free trial to any Aussie tourism business.

Like Multimap, Totaltravel has also been awarded with the HitWise “Top Ten Site” status.

Totaltravel has plans to launch a New Zealand site as well as moving into other European countries within the coming 12 months. Watch this space…