Data sources
Last updated:
The distances and walking times we show are worked out from open maps we do not own, and their licence requires us to name the source. This page says where they came from, under which licence, how they became a number — and what that number cannot do. The terms of using the site are in Terms and conditions.
OpenStreetMap and its contributors
The required notice: This site contains data from OpenStreetMap, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. The data comes from the project's contributors, and the rights are theirs.
We take three things from it:
- The courtyard fence of the Prophet's Mosque — the closed outline way/623592432, from which we measure to the edge of the courtyards, not to the centre of the building.
- The gates of the Grand Mosque — Makkah has no closed way on the map, so the gates are the edge people walk to.
- Building outlines for hotels in Makkah and Madinah — so the distance is measured from the nearest face of the building, not from a pin behind it.
Overture’s open data
Landmark outlines for cities outside the Haramain come from release 2026-10-21.0 of Overture's open data, also under the ODbL — nine building outlines and three land-use areas (two plazas and one retail area).
Today it covers: Riyadh · Istanbul · Moscow · Dubai · Paris. Anything without an outline in either source is measured to its point rather than to its edge.
Map tiles
The map image itself is served by an outside provider, and its name is printed on the map wherever it appears: tiles from OpenStreetMap by default, or Stadia Maps with OpenMapTiles over OpenStreetMap data. The credit there is not a duplicate of this one: that is for the image, this is for the numbers.
How the number is worked out — and its limits
We measure the shortest line between the nearest face of the building and the nearest point on the landmark's edge, then multiply it by 1.3 to allow for street detours, and divide the result by 80 metres per minute as an assumed walking pace; the least we show is one minute.
So it is an estimate, not a measurement of an actual route, and it has two limits we will state:
- We do not run a routing engine, so the factor is a blanket estimate and overshoots on very short walks.
- Most hotels in the Haramain have no building drawn on the map, so they are measured from their location pin — which sits inside the building, not on its face.
No distance is shown for a property with no landmark near it — a missing line means missing data, not zero distance.
Correcting a number you find wrong
If you find a distance that does not match reality, tell us at info@tipputip.com with the hotel's name, and we will check it.
And if the error is in the map itself — a building not drawn, or a missing edge — fixing it at the source on OpenStreetMap helps everyone who uses it, not only our site. We refresh from it periodically.