Visit St. Pete/Clearwater has made it even easier for visitors on-the-go to find nearby hotels, restaurants and attractions through “proximity mapping” on its newly expanded mobile website.

Visitors with a web-enabled smartphone can pull up the accessible home screen, choose from “Stay,” “Play” or “Eat” categories and then select the “Find closest to me” option. Using the phone’s GPS, the mobile site displays search results in order of distance from the phone’s location in the bottom right corner.

According to VSPC’s Internet Marketing Director Deborah Holland, the mapping targets visitors who are in the destination, but unfamiliar with the area.

Holland said the mobile mapping will soon get a further boost when new functionality is added that lets users narrow the search to distances of 5, 10 or 15 miles. Results will be limited to those distances, which will speed up the search download and give users more accurate results, she said. VSPC has plans to launch a paid ad search campaign in the coming weeks that will help drive more traffic to the mobile site as well.

Users who access VisitStPeteClearwater.com on their phone will be prompted to switch to the site’s mobile version, which can also be accessed at m.visitstpeteclearwater.com.

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