Hint Request Messages

One way to implement your price feed is to use Changed Pricing (formerly Pull with Hints). In this method:

  1. Google sends a Hint Request message (root element is <HintRequest>) that contains the time it last received an update from your server.
  2. Your server responds with a Hint Response message (<Hint>) that lists the hotels whose prices have changed since that time.
  3. Google then responds with a Query message (<Query>).
  4. Your server responds with a Transaction message (<Transaction>) that includes the updated data.

For an overview of repricing, see Repricing process.

Google sends a Hint Request message to your servers at a specified rate (we recommend 5 minutes). The frequency of the Hint Request messages is configurable. To set or modify the frequency, contact us.

The message is sent using an HTTP POST request with the Content-Type header set to "application/xml" and the User-Agent header set to Google-HotelAdsPrices.

Ensure that the endpoint that Google sends Hint Request messages to is OK by contacting your Technical Account Manager (TAM). You configured this setting during your Hotel Prices initial setup.

Hint Request messages have a root element of <HintRequest> and a single child element, <LastFetchTime>.

Hint Request Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<HintRequest id="request" timestamp="2019-06-03T22:59:48Z">
  <LastFetchTime>2019-06-03T22:54:40Z</LastFetchTime>
</HintRequest>

For more examples and additional information, refer to Query & Hints XML Reference.