Getting a POI listed on sat nav

michaelm

I know this may be a very silly question but is it up to every individual business to upload their own as a poi or are local councils/chambers of commerce doing this for, say specific towns or regions?

coylemj

It's a very good question - I have no idea where Garmin/Navteq gets the data but it's very inconsistent in the sense that there are some complete dumps listed as hotels in small towns around the country yet the Four Seasons in Ballsbridge isn't listed in the latest Garmin maps, nor is the Slieve Russell in Cavan, the Slieve Russel golf club made an appearance in the '2008' version of the maps but there's still no mention of a hotel.

As to filling stations, Windsor Motors in Deansgrange used to have Esso petrol pumps and a convenience shop up to about 10 years ago, then they closed the shop but continued to sell fuel from a kiosk which they subsequently closed when they were too busy selling cars in the days of the Celtic Tiger. They pulled down the whole place and built a brand new car showroom a few years ago but it's still listed as an Esso station on the latest Garmin/Navteq maps.

Alun

I agree, it's very unclear where the source of these things is. In the US they tend to be fairly reliable, but then 95% or more of places like restaurants, hotels and 'gas' stations there tend to be parts of big chains or franchises, and I'm sure the companies involved ensure that their listings are up to date and accurate.

I learnt the hard way very early on not to rely on the petrol station POI's on my Garmin, that's for sure

michaelm

to further this discussion - I posed the original question as I was asked by a member of a town council near where I live who wants to make sure that businesses/facilities in his town are clearly and accurately represented. Currently if you look for the nearest golf club - it shows one 20 miles away and the nearest restaurant to be 24 miles away despite the fact that there is an excellent golf club and 0ver 20 restaurants in the town in question. A system is only as good as its weakest link. I think the solution may be in a uniform approach (as I presume is used with the petrol stations) where local councils take responsibility for their own area.

zing

Afraid I can't help you on getting them added officially by TomTom, Garmin, etc.. but a start may be to add all those missing POIs on a TomTom and share them to other TomTom users using their Map Share - I know that'll only reach TomTom users but that's a fair chunk of Sat Nav users.

Also you should encouage all those businesses to publish their location's GPS coordinates on their www sites - esp the likes of golf courses, hotels, etc.. It's makes it so much easier to find them if you can just bang coords into a sat nav and head off rather than trying to follow intructions taken from some route planning site. It's such a simple thing to do and very few Irish businesses seem to do it from what I've seen.

Too many people seem to think that POI dbs are static and that you can't update them yourself. Personally I accept that POI's on Irish maps can be fairly poor so I've started to update my TomTom whenever I can - whether it be to add/delete/move a petrol station/hotel/etc.. whenever I come across a mistake/missing POI on my travels and share those updates with others. Haven't gotten down to adding/updating ATMs, etc.. but I prob will start doing that too. The more that do that the more accurate/complete a POI db we'll all have available.

coylemj

This relates only to Garmin/Navteq maps.

You'd also have to wonder where they got the data for ATMs in the '2008' maps. For example there's only one ATM in the whole of Grafton St. and that's the First Active ATM at the TCD end of the street. There are no Bank of Ireland ATMs at all in the north city centre (D1) yet Ulster Bank have two ATM symbols side by side in both College Green and O'Connell St. There is an AIB ATM in O'Connell St. opposite the Gresham Hotel and another opposite the Olympia on Dame St. and that's it for the whole city centre and get this - there isn't a single ATM in the whole of Henry St./Mary St - weird or what?