Creative use of google maps API

Google maps API provides an amazing api with great features web developers can build on to.
Here I'll present an idea I've used to build site tara smestaj mainly using google map api.

Tara smestaj is site oriented towards accommodation advertising but in a rather creative way. First of all my region is well know by tourism, it has some wonderful places to visit and enjoy in. I'm from Bajina Basta a city under mountain Tara separated from Bosnia by a river Drina, our most treasured river. (if you ever come here, try fly fishing). So the point here is that this is a place with a lot of natural wonders (see the picture bellow)

A view from one of many sites-seeing places on mountain Tara,
you can see Drina River in background.

Given we have all of this natural wonders it would be naive just to advertise accommodation in no reference to other places you can see. So the main idea is to build site which will promote tourism of Bajina Basta, but provide information for tourist not only of accommodation but also of places and sites they could visit along the way. The whole google map is integrated in site background and visitors while crawling the site can see all other attractive location relative to a position on a map.

In this way if a tourist (first timers) stumble upon a site they can explore more of a places they could see, for instance if someone chooses one accommodation over other, that could be because they know a sport fields is near the place they are staying or other could look for something else based on their on interest.

I'll share with you another interesting thing that happened just another day, my city (or town to be more precise since it has a population around 15k people) is famous by a house built on a rock of River Drina.

A house built upon a rock on river Drina. Amazing idea.

And since there is a marker of this house on tara smestaj site, a journalist from national tv called me and said that he had seen a site and is interested in doing an interview with an owner of the house. I was amazed how he stumbled upon my site since it is active somewhat over a month, but it seams that the information provided on site (about accommodation) is easy to navigate and trustworthy. (Actually he mentioned something of that kind). Of course I've gave the information of the owner (after contacting the owner) to the journalist and hopefully they'll mange to work out the interview. Anyways it's amazing yet unexpected thing that happened but all due to idea that didn't focus only to accommodation advertising...

Feel free to explore Tara smestaj and in some other post I'll add some programming details of how it all works.