Best Western Uses Google's Street View Photos To Let You Peek Inside Hotel Rooms

You know that part of Google maps that can show you the front door of your neighbor's house (or your own)? It's called Street View. Google deploys armies of vehicles equipped with special cameras that take 360 panoramic shots for Street View. They looked like this:

It is perhaps, one of Google's most useful services, marrying turn-by-turn directions with an image of what the outside of the business or house actually looks like.

That Street View technology has been adapted into something that can be worn in a backpack like this:

Or placed on a tripod like this:

And those smaller cameras, particularly the one on the tripod, have become a niche business for Google called Google Business Photos. It brings zoomable, 360-degree tours indoors.

Well Google just scored big with this service because Best Western International announced this week that all of its 2,200 hotels in North America will be photographed using the Business Photos by the end of 2014.

That means, you'll be able to take a panoramic tour of every Best Western hotel before you book your stay.

Here's what the photo tours will look like. (Click here to see the full 360-degree tour.)