Is there a database of existing POI’s I could use on my new map? For example, maybe there is a list of hotels in Paris already somewhere that I could copy onto my new map? Or a list of unesco sites in Spain I could simply copy and paste onto my new map? It would save me a lot of time, and allow me to concentrate on POI’s that do not already exist somewhere else. How can I search for such existing POI’s?
OSM is a database of POIs!
Note, as noted in another recent reply, POIs may actually have been mapped on areas, rather than as points. That’s particularly likely for hotels.
To get extracts of OSM containing particular types of POI, use the Overpass API. Note the usage limitations on this, if doing this for other than personal use.
Also note that any extract of the OSM database is licensed under the same terms as the database itself, so you will at least need to include the relevant copyright notices, and if the extract is not separable from your own data, you may need to licence your own data under the same terms. (If you can treat different sources as different layers and you don’t use information from one in constructing another, you might not trigger licensing conditions on the data that didn’t come from OSM, but the data that did come from OSM is still subject to OSM licensing.
Thanks for the quick reply. Right now I am messing around with http://extract.bbbike.org No idea what I am doing, but learning by falling and standing back up again.