The challenge
Rigid mapping infrastructure, unpredictable API costs, and slow vendor support
Since 2016, Super.com has delivered more than $1 billion in savings, growing their Super+ membership to nearly one million members. Over his four years at Super.com, Aaron Black, Staff Product Manager, has managed vendor relationships and product roadmaps, with his role spanning both the hotels and flights businesses.
For customers booking a hotel, maps play a critical role in the journey. As the company sharpened their focus on efficiency, it quickly became clear their maps spend no longer matched the value they received. Changing that infrastructure, however, wasn't a decision the team could make lightly. Any new provider would need to close that gap without sacrificing the reliability customers had come to expect.
That reliability was hard to guarantee with a large, generic provider. Aaron and his team had no direct line to an engineer, only a slow-moving support queue. If usage suddenly spiked or a bug was introduced, they were left to work through the documentation on their own. “When you hit a roadblock, it could take weeks to get responses from some of these bigger companies,” he explains.
The checkout experience carried its own friction point. Customers had to enter their billing details manually each time, without an autocomplete to populate the form. Super.com had explored an address autocomplete solution, but the pricing made the improvement too expensive to justify.
With that in mind, the team began benchmarking their existing maps provider against other providers, weighing price alongside integration and support. Radar stood out on all three.
“We work quickly at Super, so we look for companies that can keep pace with our development. We wanted a more affordable maps provider that was easier to work with and had people on the other end.”
The solution
Radar’s API-first maps platform to reduce infrastructure costs and improve checkout conversion
Onboarding was fast. Radar’s clear API documentation gave Aaron and his team a straightforward starting point. When a question came up, Radar worked directly with the team, coordinating through a few video calls and emails.
The Maps Platform build delivered an early win. Super.com had been serving static maps in several places that could be replaced with Radar’s dynamic maps at a lower cost. Beyond the added savings, the dynamic maps gave customers an interactive view of hotel bookings.
Within about a month, Aaron and his team were ready to launch an A/B test. “We’re pretty thorough about A/B testing at Super, especially if it’s within the critical path for users booking a hotel with us,” he explains. The data showed no discernible shift in customer preference, giving the team the confidence to roll Radar out across the hotel booking flow.
After the Maps Platform had been validated, Radar suggested adding the address autocomplete feature. Customers could enter a few characters, select a suggestion, and populate their remaining billing details. When suggestions were not specific to a customer's location, Radar recommended passing location context through the integration to make them more relevant. That change removed a recurring point of friction, translating directly into more completed bookings.
The same location intelligence that simplified hotel checkout now helps streamline payments for Super.com’s flights product. “Once I started building out the flights product, adding that in was kind of a no-brainer,” Aaron shares. “We built it in from day one.” Radar’s IP geocoding automatically detects a customer’s location to help prefill their address during payment, extending the same friction-reducing experience that contributed to stronger hotel booking conversion.
As Super.com scales, Radar’s team provides that same hands-on support along the way. Working alongside Aaron and his team, Radar proactively troubleshoots issues and shares guidance and best practices. “Working with Radar has been excellent. The communication is clear, the team is readily available,” he shares. That responsiveness gives Super.com’s team more time to focus their energy on enhancing the customer journey.
“Whether I simulate an address search from Toronto or California, Radar’s address autocomplete returns suggestions that are relevant to that location. That accuracy makes the feature feel genuinely intelligent.”
The results
Super.com lowers maps spend by 75% and drives more hotel bookings with modern location infrastructure
With Radar, Super.com replaced a slow, impersonal vendor with a true partner. What started with a better booking experience for hotel customers has grown into a stronger customer experience across their hotels and flights products.
- 7-figures in incremental hotel booking revenue from Radar address autocomplete
- 75% lower maps spend after switching to Radar
Aaron and the team are already exploring how Radar’s location intelligence could support additional Super.com products. With trust already built across hotels and flights, the partnership has a proven foundation for expansion when new opportunities arise.
“Our booking volume has grown substantially, and Radar has scaled with our growth every step of the way.”
