How to access the pricing setup tool
The “Price settings” page allows you to set up and manage prices across all of your matched hotels.
To access the “Price settings” page:
- Sign in to your Hotel Center account.
- From the navigation menu, select Prices.
- Select Settings.
Note: Pricing controls are on an account level and are managed across all hotels. You must set up and match your hotels through the hotel list settings before setting up the prices (excluding ARI pricing). Learn how to set up your hotel list
Pricing set up
The “Set up” page allows you to select between pull and changed pricing.
- Pull: Use this option if you want Google to optimize what prices are pulled from the given source URL. Google will determine what prices are most likely to get impressions. Most partners on Google use pull pricing by default.
- Changed pricing (previously pull with hints): You can opt into changed pricing by checking the dialog box for “Google should ask me for lists of updated hotels” on the "Set up" page. This allows you to define what prices to pull, instead of allowing Google to determine them. This is recommended if you know when every rate for every hotel changes.
Once you select your preferred delivery mode, click Continue to move on to the “Manage” tab.
Managing hotel prices
1. Define the pricing source
Add the list of IP addresses that will be used to authenticate communication and push ARI messages to Google.
2. Control how Google asks for prices
If you have custom values for these required fields, you can enter them manually. Custom settings must be within the value ranges specified below.
If you don’t know what values to input for these required fields, we set recommended values that work for most partners.
| Field | Values range | Recommended value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default availability | Open, Closed | Closed | This makes products available or not as the standard setting for your account. Closed is the default setting, meaning that products aren’t available (“stop sell”) unless you send Google an ARI message to open availability for a given night or nights. Open means that products are always available unless an ARI message is sent to stop sales for a given night or nights. |
| Maximum advance purchase | [0, 750] | 360 | How far into the future booking dates that are included in your ARI. For example, a setting of 750 days means you offer bookings for the next 750 days. |
| Maximum length of stay | [1, 360] | None | The longest stay which can be booked using your nightly ARI data. For example, a setting of 21 means that stays from 1 to 21 nights can be booked by travelers, but stays of 22 nights or more won’t be allowed. Leave this field empty if you want to allow bookings of any length. Shorter limits can always be set for specific inventory via ARI messages. |
Pull pricing
1. Define the main prices source
In the URL dialog box, enter the source URL that will receive requests from Google for hotel prices.
2. Control how Google asks for prices
If you have custom values for these required fields, you can enter them manually.
If you don’t know what values to input for these required fields, click Help me set these values. Google will then fill in the recommended values for these fields.
| Field name | Required? | Applicable for Pull or Changed Pricing | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum hotel itineraries per second (HIPs) | Required | Pull (and live pricing) | The number of queries per second your system can support. This value represents a combination of your Pull and live pricing (if applicable) indexing rate. |
| Maximum hotels in a batch query | Required | Pull and Changed Pricing | The number of hotels Google should query for in each message. |
| Maximum simultaneous requests (threads) | Required | Pull and Changed Pricing | The maximum number of parallel threads your system can support. |
3. Enable live pricing (previously live query)
When users search for an itinerary for one of your hotels, Google receives a search request for a hotel/itinerary combination. If your hotel prices aren't available or not current, you'll receive a request for a live price update. Live pricing requests are time sensitive and have a short time limit for responses. Learn more about how Google requests these price updates
If you want Google to provide the itinerary context for live pricing requests, check the dialog box. Itinerary context can include user device and country, and the number of adult and child guests. It's recommended that you respond to live pricing requests with prices that are most relevant to that context.
Note: Live pricing with context will be enabled by default for all new users.
4. Run a price test
Before you can save your price settings, you must run a test. Google recommends that users run the test with random hotel itineraries.
Run test with random hotel itineraries
To run a test with random hotel itineraries, select Test with random hotel itineraries.
If the test with random hotel itineraries fails, you can run a test with specific hotel itineraries.
Run test with specified hotel itineraries
- Specify the hotel itineraries to test.
- Enter hotel IDs into the dialog box.
- Enter the check-in date.
- Enter the number of nights.
- For additional pricing context, use the drop-down menus to select Occupancy (adults and/or children), User country, and Device type.
- Click Test to run the test , index prices, and view test results. Google has to receive at least one price per source URL in order to save your price settings. Once your price queries have passed, click Save price settings.
Note: Test results are only indicative of a successfully set up price feed. They're not indicative of whether Google has prices available for your specific itinerary. Google's pull pricing mechanism automatically determines the priority of price requests and may or may not include a specific itinerary due to feed bandwidth limits.
Changed pricing (formerly known as pull with hints)
1. Define the changed pricing request source
In the “Changed pricing request source” section, enter the source URL that will receive requests from Google for hotel prices in the URL dialog box. This server will receive requests from Google for lists of properties and itineraries with recently changed prices. You can also set the update frequency (in seconds). Learn more about how Google sends changed price requests
2. Define the main prices source
In the “Main pricing source” section, enter the source URL that will receive requests from Google for hotel prices in the URL dialog box.
3. Control how Google asks for prices
If you have custom values for these required fields, you can enter them manually.
| Field name | Required? | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Update interval | Required | The number of seconds apart Google should query your server. |
| Maximum batch size (hotels per query) | Required | The number of hotels Google should query for in each message. |
| Maximum simultaneous requests (formerly parallel requests) | Required | The maximum number of parallel threads your system can support. |
If you don't know what values to input for these required fields, click Help me set these values. Google will then fill in the recommended values for these fields.
4. Enable live pricing (previously live query)
Google receives a search request for a hotel/itinerary combination. If your hotel prices aren't available or not current, you'll receive a request for a live price update. Live pricing requests are time sensitive and have a short time limit for responses. Learn more about how Google requests these price updates
If you want Google to provide the itinerary context for live pricing requests, check the dialog box. Itinerary context can include user device and country, and the number of adult and child guests. It's recommended that you respond to live pricing requests with prices that are most relevant to that context.
5. Run a price test
Before you can save your price settings, you must run a test of the price settings. We recommend running the test with random hotel itineraries from your changed prices response.
Run test with random hotel itineraries
To run a test with random hotel itineraries, select Test with random hotel itineraries.
If the test run with random hotel itineraries fails, re-run the test until you've changed prices to test.
Run test with specified hotel itineraries
- Specify the hotel itineraries to test.
- Enter hotel IDs into the dialog box.
- Enter the check-in date.
- Enter the number of nights.
- For additional pricing context, use the drop-down menus to select Occupancy (adults and/or children), User country, and Device type.
- Click Test to run the test, index prices, and view test results. Google has to receive at least one price per source URL in order to save your price settings. Once your price queries have passed, click Save price settings.
Note: Test results are only indicative of a successfully set up price feed. They're not indicative of whether Google has prices available for your specific itinerary. Google's pull pricing mechanism auto-determines the priority of price requests and may or may not include a specific itinerary due to feed bandwidth limits.
Making changes to price configuration
Once you've set up your prices, you can always make changes to these settings by selecting the Settings page under “Prices” in the navigation menu. If you need to change your delivery mode, contact Google support.
Note: If your prices were configured in any additional delivery modes, you can also edit them.