If you saw our post about last month’s update to Maps, you may remember a teardown showed hotels would soon gain listings for amenities. Google didn’t keep us waiting for long; amenities can now be viewed on many hotel listings and in search results. As usual, we’ve got the download links below if you don’t want to wait for the slow rollout to hit your device.
What’s New
Hotel Amenities
Not all hotels are the same. Some of them have bars, some of them have a gym, and some of them even have spas. If you just need a place to stay for the night, these things might not matter; but if you’re taking a vacation or just have a little bit of free time to spend away from your room, these things can make or break your stay. Google Maps now makes it a bit easier to see what’s available at the hotels you’re thinking about before committing to check in.
Amenities show up just below the hotel details and booking link, and just above the photos. Tapping on the “More amenities” link opens up a full list of the supported amenities. Text appears in a lighter gray and the icon appears as a cross sign for features not offered by the hotel.
Left: old version. Right: new version with Wi-Fi and breakfast icons.
A couple of key amenities also appear in search results. Any time a search involves hotel results, free Wi-Fi and breakfast can also appear if they are offered. This might not give all of the details you want to see, but these two amenities are surely the most commonly expected, so it’s good to know if they aren’t available. There doesn’t seem to be a way to reliably search for hotels with specific amenities, but phrases like “hotels with spas” do reasonably well at filtering. I’d like to think there are plans to add these things to the filters screen in the future.
Carousel of Photos on Business Listings
One other minor addition was made to all business listings. If you’re not interested in the laborious task of scrolling down to the photos section, business listings now offer a carousel of images. If you reach the end of the fifth spot on the scroller, there are links to view more photos or add some of your own.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.
Version: 9.18.0 (918013124)
- APK Mirror (ARM) – 400-640dpi, 320dpi
- APK Mirror (ARM-64) – 400-640dpi
* Note: These are links to the currently available variants of the apk. If a variant for your device is not listed, click through to APK Mirror to double check that one hasn’t been added recently.