I'm a MapQuest.com fan. Maybe because I'm so often lost, I
find my way using MapQuest.com quite a lot. Their driving
directions feature is particularly helpful. I even used it recently
to figure out how to drive to a house in the next town where my
daughter was attending a birthday party. I guess I could have
called her friend's parents for directions but then I would have
had to talk to someone.
MapQuest.com's chairman and CEO is Mike Mulligan. He has a
travel background that includes a stint with us when our group was
directly involved in publishing the OAG.
I ran into Mike the week before last at the Jupiter meeting and
we sat down to chat for a few minutes:
AF: Your technology seems to be all over the Web.
MM: Yes, we map-enable many travel-related sites. Quite a few
are private-labeled so you might not even know you're getting our
maps. For example, we are Yahoo! maps. Our clients want to retain
their identities and keep people on their sites so we offer them
functionality on their templates. They also get to own the
advertising.
AF: Who are some of your travel clients?
MM: We do American Express and Carlson and a number of the big
interactive travel players as well as car rental companies such as
Hertz and Avis.
AF: In the pre-Internet world, if someone said maps, I'd think
Rand McNally or Hammond but in the Web space MapQuest has reached
the level of a recognizable brand quickly.
MM: Yes, in a recent study of Internet brands, we placed No. 20
among all brands ahead of companies like Sony and AT&T. Just to
give you an idea, Rand McNally sells about 48 million maps
annually; we give away 10 million maps a day. We're now getting
over 5 million visitors a day.
AF: What are the new applications for your service?
MM: We're now on a number of wireless platforms such as Nokia
and Sprint and Palm Pilot and we're moving toward introducing
speech recognition in June. You'll be able to use any phone and
just ask "where's the Hyatt?" and the system will know who you are
and where you are and tell you how to get to the Hyatt.
AF: What do see as the future for brick-and-mortar
retailing?
MM: I think there's always going to be place for it. Even in the
book business where Amazon.com operates, people still like to go
get that book right now or have a place to go to return books.
AF: What about MapQuest stores?
MM: (laughing) I don't know about that. But you never know.