Google Hotels cross-OTA comparison

Rate-shop one hotel through the Google Hotels backbone: StayingAPI returns the offers it can resolve for the property, normalized, with a computed lowest and median over those offers. Check offers.length — coverage ranges from several OTA rates down to a single aggregated-lowest rate.

Setup

If $STAYINGAPI_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow it to get and store the key. A stay_test_ sandbox key works for evaluation at zero cost.

When to use this skill

DO use when the user asks:

• "What is the cheapest site to book this hotel?"
• "Compare OTA rates for this property"

Do NOT use when:

• You want a list of hotels — use google-hotels-search

Required headers

Every request needs:

• Authorization: Bearer $STAYINGAPI_KEY
• User-Agent: your agent's name (e.g. ClaudeCode/1.0).

Base URL: https://api.stayingapi.com/v1.

Tools

GET /v1/price-compare

Rate-shop one property in a single call, resolved through the Google Hotels backbone. The response carries the offers the backbone exposes for that property plus StayingAPI-computed min and median over those offers as first-class fields, so you can read the cheapest rate without re-deriving it. Coverage varies by property: some resolve to several OTA offers, others to a single aggregated-lowest offer (then offers has one entry, min equals median, and the entry may be a direct-supplier rate rather than an OTA). Read offers.length before presenting a result as a multi-platform comparison — the schema does not guarantee more than one.

Key parameters:

• name — Property name to resolve.
• googleHotelId — Precise Google Hotels id.
• location — Disambiguating place / "lat,lng".
• checkIn — Required. YYYY-MM-DD; not in the past.
• checkOut — Required. Must be after checkIn.
• adults — ≥ 1.

MCP (no key pasted into the agent)

On an MCP-capable runtime, connect https://mcp.stayingapi.com/mcp (OAuth 2.1 + PKCE) and use: compare_prices.

Platform × endpoint support

Not every endpoint supports every platform. Verified:

platform	search	availability	price	price-compare	listing	reviews
airbnb	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
booking	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
vrbo	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
google	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no

GET /v1/listing/google/… and GET /v1/reviews?platform=google return 400 platform_not_enabled ("google is not enabled for this endpoint"). Use booking, airbnb or vrbo for listing detail and reviews; use google for search, price and cross-OTA price-compare.

The cross-OTA advantage

StayingAPI is cross-platform: Google Hotels data comes back in the same unified schema as Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo, so one integration covers them all. /v1/price-compare resolves a property through the Google Hotels backbone and returns the offers it exposes plus a StayingAPI-computed min and median over those offers, as first-class fields.

Coverage varies by property and by what the backbone returns: some properties come back with several OTA offers, others with a single aggregated-lowest offer (in which case min equals median and offers has one entry, sometimes a direct-supplier rate rather than an OTA). Read offers.length before describing a result as a multi-platform comparison.

Async & partial failures

A live call that has to scrape returns 202 with data.jobId, data.pollUrl and data.estimatedSeconds (the 202 itself charges 0). Poll GET /v1/jobs/{jobId} (free) until data.status is TERMINAL — completed or failed.

• completed → the payload is at data.result (the same schema the sync call returns; data itself is just {jobId, result, status}). meta carries partial, platformResults[] and warnings[]. A completed job may still return an empty result (data.result: []) — the reason is in meta.warnings[] (e.g. no_results), and empty results charge 0.
• failed → HTTP is still 200, not an HTTP error. The failure is nested at data.error (code, type, message, retryable). Detect it with data.status === "failed", not a top-level error. creditsCharged is 0, and meta carries only {requestId, creditsCharged, platforms} — do not read partial, platformResults or warnings on a failed job.

Pace your polling: honour the Retry-After header, back off between attempts, and cap the number of attempts. A tight loop hits 429 rate_limit_exceeded (120 requests/minute).

Known limitations

• Pagination: limit/cursor are accepted where documented, but availability depends on the endpoint and the upstream source — treat meta.pagination as authoritative and stop when hasMore is false or nextCursor is null.
• Externally-sourced ids: a Vrbo id obtained somewhere other than /v1/search may not resolve upstream and can produce a failed job (all_actors_failed). Prefer ids from /v1/search (platformListingId).
• Platform gaps: see the support matrix above — google has no listing or reviews endpoint.

Credits

Number-free by design — failed, empty and blocked calls are never billed, and stay_test_ sandbox calls are always free. Current costs: https://stayingapi.com/pricing · full contract: https://api.stayingapi.com/openapi.json.

Trademark

StayingAPI is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google Hotels. Google Hotels is a trademark of its respective owner.

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Get your free key → https://stayingapi.com/signup · Docs: https://stayingapi.com/docs