island resort with pool and palm trees around
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Building an interactive map with Google Maps

Wild Dunes, an oceanfront resort located in Isle of Palms, SC., builds an interactive map with Google Maps Platform.

Business Challenge

Located on 1,600 acres in the Isle of Palms, South Carolina, Wild Dunes is a beach-lover’s paradise. The resort offers endless amenities ranging from beachside dining to luxurious spas to award-winning golf courses. With plans to grow, Wild Dunes recognized that the printed and PDF resort maps they offered guests weren’t a scalable option. Needing an interactive and easy-to-update map, Wild Dunes turned to Woolpert Digital Innovations and Google.

Benefits

  • A stunning map and on-website experience
  • Ease of use with back-end edits and additions
  • Up-to-date method of providing guests with property information

“In this day and age, everybody is on their phone and everyone is familiar with Google Maps to navigate wherever you’re going. So what we wanted to do was create something similar on property for guests.”

- Ashleigh Iriving, Marketing Director

Working With Woolpert

Woolpert Digital Innovations has worked with Hyatt Hotel Corporation since 2019 and began working with the Wild Dunes team in late 2020. Wild Dunes Marketing Director expressed, “The Woolpert Digital Innovations team has been great. I have learned a ton. I went into this interactive map not having an idea how I would get it done. The team has been super supportive and helpful with the random questions I may have.” Both teams look forward to entering phase two and continuously adding features to the map.

To check out Wild Dunes’ resort map, visit https://www.destinationhotels.com/wild-dunes/hotel/charleston-resort-map.

The Solution

The Google Maps Platform was a simple choice for Wild Dunes when considering user experience thanks to its familiarity. Working with Woolpert Digital Innovations, a premier Google partner, Wild Dunes was able to develop an interactive map displaying the amenities, activities, accommodations, dining and more.

As Wild Dunes grows and adds new elements to its resort, the team on the backend has the ability to effortlessly add and modify locations on the map. “Being able to copy a GPS coordinate and line it up better, that ease and flexibility is awesome because we are still adding things to our property” stated Wild Dunes Marketing Director Ashleigh Irving. This process is made possible through Google Sheets, where coordinates can be entered with location information and quickly uploaded to the map using App Script. Both of these user friendly products are a part of Google Workspace.

To amplify the visual component of its resort map, Wild Dunes commissioned a creative agency to design artwork that could be overlayed on Google’s dynamic map. This simple addition makes for a stunning map that can be easily panned and zoomed by guests. All location data and map artwork is all backed up by Google Cloud storage, which enables Wild Dunes to scale seamlessly.

Not only does this new interactive map provide guests with a positive experience, but it puts staff at ease being able to grow without the concern of scrambling to create a new map.

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