Put the hotel list in a Google Sheet with one row per attendee, import it into a Google My Maps layer with the hotel column as the location, and share the map's link. For an event of 50 to 500 people that is an evening's work and costs nothing. It stops working in three places: the map does not follow the sheet, the link opens for anyone who has it, and nothing deletes either file after the event.
The facts about Google's tools below come from Google's own help pages, checked on 3 November 2026.
How do you build the map in My Maps?
Start with the sheet. One row per person, column titles in the first row: Name, Hotel, Arrives, Departs. My Maps needs one column it can put on a map, and it takes latitude and longitude, addresses or place names (Google: import map features). A hotel's name followed by the city counts as a place name, so nobody has to look up a street address.
Then open My Maps, create a map, click Add layer in the legend, name the layer and click Import under it. Pick the Google Sheet. You choose the column that places each pin (Hotel) and the one that titles it (Name). Style the layer by the Hotel column so each hotel gets its own color, and share.
Will My Maps hold 500 attendees?
Easily. Google says not to import files with more than 2,000 rows (Google: import map features). A layer holds 2,000 lines, shapes or places, and a map up to 10,000 in total (Google: size limits), spread over at most 10 layers (Google: map layers). A 500-person event fills a quarter of one layer.
The limit you do hit is visual. Everyone at the same hotel resolves to the same point, so pins at the same address sit on top of each other and read as one pin on a phone. The usual fix is to turn the sheet around: one row per hotel, with the names in a second column. That map reads well, and it's the kind you find on conference lodging pages. It also means someone retypes a cell every time a person books.
Does the map update when the sheet changes?
No. The import is a copy. To pick up changes you open the layer's menu, choose Reimport and merge, pick one of four options and select the file again (Google: import map features). One of them, Update matching items, also deletes. In Google's words: "Any map features in the original layer that don't match the new file will be deleted." Colors you set by a data column carry over to the new data.
So the map is as current as the last time its owner remembered to reimport. The conference in Chicago that heer(ish) was first built for ran on a sheet and a map like these, and the sheet was wrong from the first person who changed hotels. A room block sells out and people move, or two colleagues decide to share, and every one of those changes is a message to whoever holds the sheet.
Who can see the sheet and the map?
Anyone with the link, and they need no Google account. Google Drive describes its "Anyone with the link" setting like this: "Anyone on the internet who has the link can open the file without signing in to a Google Account" (Google: share files in Drive). My Maps offers link sharing or making the map public, and a map embedded on the event site has to be public (Google: share your map).
For a list of names next to hotels, that means a forwarded link is a complete copy of who sleeps where, for as long as the files exist. If attendees type their own rows, each of them is an editor, and editors can browse the sheet's earlier versions and restore one (Google: version history). Someone who deletes their row is gone from the current sheet and still in the history. The owner can delete the history, but the same page limits that: "Deleting version history is available only for users with a personal Google Account." An organizer working from a company Workspace account should not count on it.
A Google Form in front of the sheet keeps attendees out of the file. And ask before anyone lands on the map: if the hotels came from registration, people gave them to you to book rooms, not to be shown to 300 other attendees.
How do attendees open the map on a phone?
In a browser, or inside Google Maps. Google shut down the My Maps app for Android on 15 October 2021. Its notice says the maps are still there "In the Google Maps app, at the bottom of the 'Saved' tab" or at mymaps.google.com in a browser (Google: deprecation of My Maps for Android). The same notice adds: "You can't use My Maps offline." Attendees on a foreign SIM with a thin data plan will notice that.
What happens to the map after the event?
Nothing, unless you act. Both files sit in the owner's Drive until someone deletes them, and until then the link works in every inbox and group chat it was pasted into. Put a date in the calendar for the week after the event and delete the map and the sheet.
When is a sheet and My Maps the right tool?
When the organizer owns the data. A map of the three hotels with room blocks, the venue and the restaurant for the closing dinner changes once, holds nobody's personal details and needs no one's consent. My Maps is the right tool for that. It's free, and attendees already have Google Maps on their phones.
It's the wrong tool when the data belongs to the attendees: where each person stays, when they arrive, and the change they make on Wednesday night. Then the attendee should keep their own row current, and others should see only what that attendee agreed to show.
That is the job heer(ish) does. Attendees open one link, add a card with their hotel and dates, and tick a box that reads "Show where I'm staying to everyone at this event." The organizer caps the precision at city, district or a named hotel. At hotel level the map has one pin per hotel with the initials of a few of the people there and a count. At city level there is no map at all. Nobody installs anything, and the event's data is deleted 14 days after the last day, or 30 days for events in the US region. It's free up to 50 attendees.