Place Categories, Place Features and Tags

This guide explains the key differences between Place Categories, Place Features and Tags. When used together, these features can give your visitors the ability to easily find Places that are of most interest to them, such as:

• participating restaurants in a local food festival;
• cheap places to stay;
• wheelchair-accessible outdoor spaces;
• and much more – the possibilities are limitless;

Place Categories are about differences.

Place Categories are terms that make one Place different from another Place. For example, if you’re using DMOPress to highlight local hotels and restaurants, your Place Categories might look like these:

• Stay Here
  • Hotels
  • Motels
• Eat Here
  •  Asian
    • Chinese
    • Indonesian
    • Japanese
    • Thai
    • Vietnamese
  • French
  • Italian

As you can see above, Place Categories can have a hierarchy. This structure can be any number of levels deep, although for practical purposes it’s best to keep it to 3 or fewer levels.

A Place can also belong to many different Place Categories. For example, a restaurant might serve both Thai and Vietnamese food, so it will appear in searches for either of these terms.

Place Features are about similarities.

Place Features are used to highlight attributes that different kinds of Places have in common. So your Place Features might look like these:

• Accommodation Features
  • Exercise Room
  • Indoor Pool
• Dining Features
  • Family Friendly
  • Gluten Free Menu
  • Reservations Required
• Free Parking
• Valet Parking
• Wheelchair Accessible

Place Features can also be hierarchical. This structure can be any number of levels deep, although once again it’s usually best to stick with 3 or fewer.

A Place can also have many different Place Features; as many as required. A fancy restaurant might have ‘Reservations Required’ and ‘Valet Parking’, for example.

Tags link different types of content together.

Tags are used to group different WordPress content types together. These are the same built-in tags that come standard with WordPress itself.

Use tags to make connections between Places, Posts, Pages and Events. For example:

• Christmas Delights
• Foodfest 2017
• Hidden Gems
• Local Favorites

Unlike Place Categories and Place Features, Tags have a flat structure. There is no hierarchy. A Place can have one or many Tags, or none at all.