Uploading and Configuring Your Property Map

A property map is an uploaded image (aerial photo, marina diagram, campground map) with assets pinned at real coordinates. It powers visual booking — staff and customers click directly on a slip or site to start a reservation, instead of scrolling a list.

Maps are optional. The system works fine without them. But once you have one, it becomes the primary way most users interact with availability. They're worth investing an hour in.

When you'd use this

Set up a property map when:

Your inventory is physically organized in space in a way customers and staff need to navigate (a marina has docks A through F, a campground has sections, a self-storage has buildings).
You have enough assets that scrolling a list is annoying — somewhere over ~20.
You want customers to self-book through a public-facing visual flow.

Skip the map (or keep it for staff use only) when:

You have a handful of identical assets where spatial layout doesn't matter (a fleet of 10 identical kayaks, for example).
You don't have a usable image of your property and don't want to make one.

The maps catalog — each map is an uploaded image with assets pinned at coordinates

The image you upload matters more than people expect

Pins are placed relative to the image you upload. That has a few real consequences:

If you swap the image later, every pin moves. Plan to use the same image for years. Get it right the first time.
Resolution matters. Too small and the map looks blurry on customer-facing screens. Too large and pages load slowly. Aim for something around 1500–2500 pixels on the long side.
Aspect ratio should match your property. A square photo of a long, thin marina wastes screen real estate.
The image should look professional. Customers see this. A blurry phone photo of a printed paper map is a terrible first impression. Get a real aerial (a Google Earth screenshot at high zoom is fine), or have a designer trace a clean diagram from your site plan.

Recommended image sources, ranked

Drone aerial of your property, taken on a clear day at midday (no shadows). Best option if you have access — the realism is unbeatable.
Google Earth or satellite imagery screenshot at maximum zoom, then cropped tight. Free, fast, looks credible.
A clean traced diagram based on your site plan. Best for storage facilities and indoor layouts where photographs are uninformative.
Hand-drawn or printed paper map photographed. Avoid if at all possible. Looks unprofessional.

Setting up the map — the typical flow

Choose the image following the guidance above.
Upload it. The map is keyed by name; pick something descriptive ("Main Marina", "RV Park West", "Storage Building A") because you may have multiple maps for different parts of the property.
Check the upload looks right in the map viewer at full zoom. Scrolling, pinch-zoom, and pan should all behave reasonably. If the image is too small or too large, fix it before proceeding.
Draw zones (optional but recommended). A zone is a named region of the map — "Dock A", "Section 100s", "Climate Building." Zones are useful for grouping in reports and for filtered searches ("show me availability on Dock A only"). Draw them by clicking corners on the map; the system stores the polygon.
Pin each asset where it lives on the map. Drop a pin for each existing asset at its real location. The pin sticks to its spot on the image, so as long as you don't replace the image, your pins stay put.
Test from a customer's perspective. Open the public booking flow and confirm the map renders, that pins look right, and that clicking a pin starts a booking for the right asset.

Recommended defaults

One map per property/section, not one map per asset. You shouldn't end up with 50 maps. If your property is large, split it into 2–4 logical regions max.
Don't draw too many zones. A zone for every dock plus a zone for every section number is too many. 5–10 zones max for most properties; one for each major area customers think about ("North Dock," "South Dock," "Mooring Field").
Use the same compass orientation as your real property — usually north up. Customers comparing the digital map to standing-on-site reality get confused if the map is rotated.

What customers see

Once the map is published, customers visit your booking page and see a clickable rendering: zones outlined, assets pinned, color-coded by availability for the dates they've selected. They click a pin, the booking wizard opens for that asset. It's a much better experience than a search list.

You can keep the map staff-only if you only want internal booking through it — that's a configuration choice in the map's settings.

Common mistakes

Uploading a tiny phone photo of a printed paper map. It looks like a photocopy of a fax. Customers don't trust the booking page after seeing this. Spend the 30 minutes to get a clean image.
Pinning assets before deciding on the final image. Then re-uploading a corrected image and watching every pin land in the wrong spot. Get the image right first; pin afterward.
Drawing zones for organizational purposes that don't match what customers care about. Internal zones ("electric panel zone 3") are useless to customers. Zones should be the labels customers use ("North Beach", "RV Section").
Forgetting that zones can also be used for technician dispatch. If you also run mobile service work, the same zones can drive routing. Draw zones around real-world boundaries (a section, a dock, a building) so they're useful for both bookings and dispatch.
Treating the map as the only way to book. Some staff and customers prefer a list. Both views work; don't disable the list view just because you have a map.
Not re-anchoring pins after a layout change. When you renumber Dock A or rebuild section 100, the physical layout changed; you need to update both the asset records and their pin locations.