WebProNews

Every travel site should offer some sort of map; they’re useful, and the idea isn’t particularly hard to arrive at.  VibeAgent is going above and beyond, however, with My Maps, a sort of customized, social network-y concoction.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s Google maps mashup,” wrote Adam Healey, VibeAgent’s cofounder and CEO, on the corporate blog.  “It’s fun.  It’s powerful.”  And - in a way that meshes nicely with “powerful” - it’s pretty versatile.

“You can read user profiles, hotel reviews, and group descriptions, or browse hotel photos all without leaving your map,” according to Healey.  “You can zoom into a geography of interest and see who in your network has stayed there, and what they have to say about it.  You can quickly jump to a friend’s map and see what’s brewing in their network.  You can visit your Scuba group and see where they recommend staying on the Red Sea, or hop over to your Beaches group and see what they like in the Caribbean.”

Mashable’s Kristen Nicole has screenshots of My Maps in action; a system of tabs keeps things from getting too cluttered, and some elements (such as the “My News” feed) are even reminiscent of the ever-popular Facebook.  Combined with Google’s Maps, that’s a mixture that’s hard to beat.

And so it’s only natural that VibeAgent is close to winning.  Nicole notes “the company’s announcement that it has reportedly climbed the ranks to become the 5th largest hotel site in the world,” and continues, “This may sound somewhat surprising, considering that VibeAgent has yet to launch, and is still in private beta, but this is largely due to VibeAgent’s new partners, OneTravel and TravelWorm. . . .  This increases the number of hotels in VibeAgent’s database to 120,000+, offering more resources for users to gather information from.”

Sounds impressive; it should be interesting to see what else VibeAgent accomplishes in the time before its launch.