2.2 billion people open Google Maps every month. They can navigate to your hospital, your mall, your airport — and then they walk through the door and the map disappears. Here's why that matters, and what we're doing about it.
Google Maps is the most used navigation platform on earth. But its indoor coverage reveals an enormous, mostly untouched market.
99.994% of buildings are invisible from the inside on Google Maps.
To your visitors, the moment they walk through your door, the map goes blank.
Already anxious, possibly unwell. Google Maps gets them to the front door. Then nothing. They wander corridors asking for directions. They're late. The experience starts badly before care even begins.
Their gate is a 14-minute walk. They don't know it. They stop at a screen, ask staff, backtrack. Every minute of confusion is a cost — to them, and to the airport's operational load.
They know the store they want exists. They can't find it. They give up or ask staff who are busy with other things. Research shows people spend less when they can't navigate confidently.
Wrong floor, wrong wing, wrong company. The lobby staff field the same questions every day. Small frictions, repeated thousands of times, add up to real operational cost.
Late to their first lecture because they couldn't find building B2. A small thing — but it's their first impression of the institution, and it's entirely preventable.
In for an interview or a meeting. They arrive stressed because reception was hard to find. The building made a bad first impression before anyone said hello.
This isn't a technology gap. Google Maps already supports indoor maps. The infrastructure exists. The platform has 2.2 billion users. What's missing is the data — your floor plans, converted, enriched, and published.
That's the only thing standing between your building and being fully navigable for every visitor who already has Google Maps on their phone.
"Google Maps already knows your address. It just doesn't know your corridors."
If people arrive at your building using Google Maps, they expect the experience to continue inside. For these verticals, the impact of indoor mapping is immediate and measurable.
The highest-priority use case. Patients navigating complex buildings under stress — finding emergency rooms, wards, pharmacies, and labs. Healthcare indoor location is growing at 26% CAGR.
Highest ROIEvery traveler has Google Maps open when they land. Airports can reduce passenger stress and operational load simultaneously. Gates, lounges, security, customs, arrivals — all mappable.
Flagship use caseConfident navigation directly increases dwell time and sales. Retail is the largest vertical in indoor location, representing 28% of the market. Every minute a shopper spends lost is revenue lost.
High ROIMulti-building campuses where students, staff, and visitors navigate daily. First impressions matter — a student who can't find their first lecture doesn't forget it.
Pilot: HelsinkiEvents pack thousands of people into complex spaces with high time pressure. Seats, concessions, restrooms, emergency exits — indoor maps reduce congestion and improve safety.
Event-readyMeeting rooms, reception, parking, specific departments. Faster onboarding for new employees. Frictionless first impressions for every client or candidate who visits.
EnterpriseIndoor location is one of the fastest-growing segments in the broader mapping and location market — and it's growing precisely because the infrastructure is now in place and the data gap is becoming obvious to building operators.
Navigation & maps represents 31% of that market — the segment hall.ar operates in. Healthcare is growing fastest at 26% CAGR. Retail holds the largest share at 28%. Both are core to our initial target verticals in Helsinki and Buenos Aires.
The accelerant: Google Maps is actively expanding its indoor mapping program and increasing the number of supported venues. Being a certified Google Maps Content Partner positions hall.ar in exactly the right place to capture this growth.
Most building operators have the floor plans. What they don't have is the process to convert them into the format Google Maps requires, publish them through the right partnership program, and keep them updated. That's exactly what we do.
PDF, DWG, image — any format. We need the layout, the floors, and which spaces matter to your visitors: stores, wards, gates, offices. That's the full brief.
Our pipeline extracts rooms, corridors, points of interest and navigable routes, then generates IMDF — the Indoor Mapping Data Format required by Google Maps. Every map is reviewed by a human before it goes live.
We publish through the Google Maps Content Partner program. Visitors can navigate your building directly in the app they already have installed. No additional hardware. No QR codes. No app to download.
For a typical building with a few floors, delivery takes a few business days from when we receive your floor plans. Larger or more complex buildings may take up to two weeks. No endless procurement cycles.
Three things converged to make this the right moment:
With 2.2 billion monthly users, Google Maps is now infrastructure — like electricity or running water. Buildings without indoor maps are increasingly noticeable by their absence. Visitors expect it.
Apple and Google both adopted the Indoor Mapping Data Format, giving the industry a single, stable, open standard to build on. The technical foundation is now settled — it's an execution problem, not a research problem.
Manually digitizing floor plans used to take weeks and cost tens of thousands. AI-assisted processing has collapsed both the time and the cost — making it viable to serve not just airports, but hospitals, malls, and office buildings at scale.
Indoor mapping has genuine technical, legal, and operational complexities. We've read the research. Here's how hall.ar addresses each one directly.
Correct — GPS degrades severely inside buildings due to concrete, steel, and signal multipath. But Google Maps Indoor doesn't rely on GPS. It uses IMDF floor plan data combined with the WiFi signals already present in your building for positioning. No new hardware, no beacons, no installation.
Zero new infrastructure requiredThis is a real concern that stops many projects. Our process works with your legal team from day one. We use as-built operational drawings — which typically belong to the building owner, not the architect — or we obtain the necessary licensing as part of our onboarding. We've mapped this process carefully across Finnish and Argentine jurisdiction.
Legal framework includedWe publish only public circulation areas — corridors, entrances, elevators, restrooms, retail units, gates. Restricted zones (operating theatres, server rooms, staff-only areas) are explicitly excluded. Every map goes through human validation before publishing. Google Maps Indoor already operates under this "public zones only" model across all 12,000 buildings it supports.
Public zones only, human-validatedThis is a legitimate trade-off, not a flaw. Google Maps Indoor solves one specific problem: wayfinding for the external visitor who already has Google Maps. It's not a replacement for enterprise solutions (Mappedin, MazeMaps) that integrate with internal systems. Many buildings run both: Google Maps for public navigation, a private IPS for operations, asset tracking, and analytics. hall.ar positions you for the first layer.
Complementary to enterprise IPSIt is complex — which is exactly why hall.ar exists. BIM-to-IMDF conversion requires stripping a model from gigabytes of construction data down to a clean navigable geometry, re-categorizing spaces semantically, and geolocalizing the result. Our AI pipeline handles this. You send us what you have — PDF, DWG, image, BIM export — and we deliver a validated IMDF ready for Google Maps.
Any format acceptedMaps do need maintenance — this is real. Our service includes a maintenance contract: you notify us of changes (a store moves, a corridor closes, a floor is renamed) and we update the map. Update cost is a fraction of the original build. Unlike physical signage, there's no print run, no installation crew, no reprinting when things change again.
Maintenance contract includedA fully detailed architectural drawing — yes. What we publish is a visitor-facing navigation layer: public corridors, labeled spaces, accessible routes. Critical infrastructure (HVAC, electrical, server rooms, security blind spots) is never included. The level of detail is comparable to the printed wayfinding maps already on your walls — and those have been public for decades.
Visitor navigation layer onlyHospitals lose an estimated $3M per year to missed appointments caused by navigation failures. Healthcare staff spend ~40 hours per year per employee just giving directions. Mall operators see measurable dwell time increases with indoor navigation. Airport staff redirection costs drop. These are documented figures — and hall.ar delivers the result in days, not the months a private IPS project requires.
Measurable impact from day oneTell us where your building is. We'll follow up with a free walkthrough of what an indoor map could look like for your specific space — no obligation, no sales pitch.
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