# Vacation Rentals Similar to Hotel Ads, integrating with Vacation Rentals requires completion of one-time tasks to set up vacation rental properties and prices to be displayed to users searching for their next destination. The integration process can be started either directly with Google, by meeting the requirements listed below and completing the [Vacation Rentals interest form](https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevacationrentalsinterestform), or by collaborating with an [approved third-party integration partner](https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/10224602). Once approved, a Google Technical Account Manager will be in touch with you at every step of the integration pipeline. In summary, you should implement: 1. **Property listing:** Static information about the property including name, address, GeoCode locations, image and website URLs, and amenities. 2. **Price:** Itinerary that indicates the availability and price of a stay at a property. 3. **Landing Page:** Template that allows users to land on your websites with prefilled itinerary information. ## Before you begin Before integrating with Vacation Rentals, you should be able to provide the following: - A designated partner technical contact who can be contacted by a Google Technical Account Manager. - A contract signed with Google to protect customer privacy. - Localized self-service or email-based user support. ## Property listing feed A Vacation Rentals listing feed contains all the properties to be shown on Google. This feed contains the physical attributes of the property including name, address, GeoCode locations, image URLs, website URLs, and amenities. If you are unsure whether your property is a Vacation Rental or Hotel, refer to [Categories for hotels and lodging businesses](https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/9970971). > [!IMPORTANT] > **Key Point:** If Google detects any Hotel properties, Google reserves the right to refrain from serving them or may ask you to revise your feed. There are 2 options to provide your vacation rental listings. ### Method 1: Crawled list feed This method is the preferred approach for partners with smaller inventories including property managers who prefer a simpler setup and maintenance. Partners mark up their site with structured data and Google can crawl it to generate the list feed. #### Mark up your website Follow the [Search Console Documentation](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/vacation-rental) for marking up the vacation rentals on your site. #### Create a sitemap with vacation rental listings Google will automatically follow links on your site to discover your vacation rental listings. To help ensure that Google finds all of your listings and finds them faster, you can create a sitemap with your vacation rental listings. Follow [the guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap) for creating a sitemap. There are a few additional requirements on the sitemap for the crawled listing feed: - The sitemap must contain the vacation listings URLs; it cannot be a [sitemap index](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/12818558), which is used by other search products. - It's preferred that the sitemap only contain Vacation Rental listings URLs, but it can contain other URLs as well. - You can provide multiple sitemaps. - Share the link(s) to your sitemap with your Google Technical Account Manager. ### Method 2: XML List Feed The method is a good option for connectivity partners and partners with larger inventories. For initial ingestion, partners will create a vacation rental list feed and include attributes unique to vacation rentals. #### Create the XML files For initial ingestion, you need to share a listing feed with the Google Technical Account Manager based on the specifications provided in the [Hotel list feed XML reference](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/xml-reference/hotel-list-feed#attribute-names-vr). However, unlike hotel lists, you should include relevant [attributes specific to Vacation Rentals](https://developers.google.com/hotels/vacation-rentals/dev-guide/vr-attributes). The ingestion of the listing feed can take approximately 2 to 4 weeks, during which Google will be in touch with you to assist with troubleshooting and optimizing the feed. > [!IMPORTANT] > **Key Point:** If you omit attribute values listed as **Optional (strongly > recommended)**, it does not prevent the list feed from validating, but it can result in the listing not showing in search results when certain filters are applied. #### Attributes unique to vacation rentals The general XML structure has a similar format as Hotel listing feeds. See [Hotel list XML reference](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/xml-reference/hotel-list-feed). Failure to include the following items automatically disables the listing. - Required XML child elements: `id`, `name`, `latitude`, `longitude`, `address`. - Required attributes: `capacity` and `website`. - See example of the [direct link to property](https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/10519514) in your listing feed. This gives users the opportunity to visit the property website. - [Vacation Rentals-specific attributes, child elements, and XML example](https://developers.google.com/hotels/vacation-rentals/dev-guide/vr-attributes). #### Host the listing feed and file structure Host your listing feed in a ZIP file. Google fetches the latest set of property listings in your inventory daily. Mind the following requirements for importing the hosted listing file: - ZIP files are to be shared with Google. - Feeds should be shared in the ZIP format only (no TAR or GZ). - Each ZIP file can contain multiple listing XML files. - Each XML file should contain multiple listings. - Each XML file must be less than 100 MB. - Avoid having a large number of XML files. Consolidate multiple listings per file. - Each XML file can only contain one language. - Example: `xml{:.readonly} en...` - For non-primary languages, include only the unique hotel ID and content for the property in that language only. #### Testing your XML To verify that your XML files are correct before sharing them with Google, use the following command to validate your feed as explained in [Hotel Ads schemas](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/schemas): xmllint --noout --schema http://www.gstatic.com/localfeed/local_feed.xsd myfile.xml ### Property listing image requirements > [!WARNING] > **Warning:** Listings with fewer than 5 images will be blocked from appearing on Google Vacation Rentals. We recommend that listings have at least 8 photos (at least 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, and 1 common area). Having fewer than 8 photos could impact performance metrics for the listing. > [!IMPORTANT] > **Key Point:** Although 8 is the minimum recommendation, we strongly recommend providing 20+ photos (or as many as you have available) for a competitive advantage. Use the best possible quality images, provided that they fit within the following constraints: - Recommended resolution: 1920 x 1080 px - Maximum height: 4000 px - Maximum width: 4000 px - Maximum overall size: 10 MB - File format: JPG, JPEG, PNG, WEBP - Orientation: Landscape - Ensure image URLs are accessible to **Googlebot and Googlebot-Image** and not blocked in `robots.txt` or an HTTP `X-Robots-Tag` header. For more information, see [Test your `robots.txt`](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062598). No watermark or branding should be in the images. Properties without images are automatically be disabled from serving. The image order is auto-generated and cannot be changed. Google ranks and displays images within your property listing and could take into consideration factors, such as user query terms. For example, when a user searches for "vacation rentals with a pool," pool-related images might display at a higher level. ### Common issues Room-sharing is not supported in Google Vacation Rentals. We only support full properties. Every bookable property should be sent to Google as a separate `` that contains its own details and attributes. For example, each apartment unit inside a multi-unit building should be sent as a separate ``. Attributes play an important role in explaining the details of the properties, so send as many attributes as possible to help promote your properties. ## Price feed Once listing feed ingestion and troubleshooting is completed, you need to set up Hotel Price integration so that Google is able to cache the updated itinerary prices for Vacation Rental properties. There are two methods for setting up pricing: - Method 1: Google transaction pricing - Method 2: ARI pricing support for vacation rentals ### Method 1: Google transaction pricing If you are using [Google transaction prices](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/updating-prices) to pass your prices to Google, price integration is the same as [Hotels price integration](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/updating-prices). Refer to the XML reference: [Pricing \& room inventory (transactions)](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/xml-reference/transaction-messages). You can begin implementing your Price feed using the [PULL delivery method](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/delivery-mode#pull). If the PULL method is successful, you can upgrade to the [PULL+HINT (changed pricing) method](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/delivery-mode#hints) for better control of updated prices. A [Live Pricing query](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/query-messages#live-pricing-queries) endpoint (similar to a PULL endpoint) can be used to fetch prices for users when they visit itineraries that are not cached at Google. ### Method 2: ARI pricing support for Vacation Rentals [Availability, Rates, and Inventory (ARI)](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/ari-overview) can be used to deliver nightly rates and availability information that Google uses to generate prices to users. In Vacation Rentals, each unit is a separate listing, with exactly one room of one room type. There can, however, be multiple different rate plans (packages) for each property. For example: - You can offer guests booking options with different value addons, such as free cancellation. - You can use rate plans as virtual rates to implement promotions with extra restrictions (even though the [Promotions API](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/xml-reference/ari-promotions) is preferable for that use case). Best practices for ARI messages for Vacation Rentals are: - For Transaction (Property Data): - Specify a single `RoomData` element with the room ID you have selected to represent the individual unit on the listing, matching the `@InvTypeCode` in the ARI messages. You can reuse the property ID. - Specify one or more `PackageData` elements for each rate plan you plan to use. - For OTA_HoteInvCountNotifRQ: - Set an inventory count of 1 if the unit is available on a given date, or 0 if it has been booked. ## Landing pages The basics of configuring [Landing pages](https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/pos-overview) are the same for Vacation Rentals integration as for Hotels integration. There must be at least one general landing page available to all users without any restrictions. The following landing page example covers every user country and language. In this example, `My Amazing VR Website` is the brand name users see in the Vacation Rentals search results: https://example.com/property/(PARTNER-HOTEL-ID)?checkin= (CHECKINDAY)%2F(CHECKINMONTH)%2F(CHECKINYEAR)&checkout= (CHECKOUTDAY)%2F(CHECKOUTMONTH)%2F(CHECKOUTYEAR)&guests=(NUM-GUESTS) ## Price accuracy Based on the [Referral experience policy](https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/6064406), Google expects that the prices and availability cached on the Google side will match the prices and availability on your website. We regularly check the prices in the cache with your website prices and assign a Price Accuracy Score based on the freshness of the prices in the Google price cache. For an account to be eligible to be enabled and shown to the users, it must be above the Price Accuracy Score threshold for a certain number of days to make sure there are no fundamental issues with passing prices to Google. These checks continue even after the account goes live. You have access to mismatched cases and details in your Hotel Center account throughout integration and afterwards to help in troubleshooting. ## Brand associations specific to integration partners Brand association lets you group vacation rental properties together. You can associate brand-specific icons (or logos) to the set of properties in a brand. Follow the instructions on [How to associate your properties to brands](https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/9919249#how_to_associate_your_properties_to_brands). > [!IMPORTANT] > **Key Point:** Brand association does not happen automatically. You need to sync with your Google Technical Account Manager to enable brand association for your account.