Hotel List XML Reference

The webpage associated with the listing from the provider. Has the following child elements:

• : A link to the description. Include the "http://" or
  "https://" in this element (optional).
• Stay in this newly renovated 3BR house with ocean views. month="7" day="23" year="2023"/> https://hotel.example.com name="rating">8.2 type="photo" url="https://image_url"> https://image_url ...

  The tag can be used to describe property amenities and to classify ratings for the property.

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  Child elements

  Child element	Required?	Description
  	Optional	The primary website for the hotel. If present, it must be positioned before the first element. Example: https://hotel.example.com
  attribute_name">	Optional	An additional characteristic or "attribute" of the property that can be specified using the supported attribute_name or attribute_name for Vacation Rentals.

  Values for the attribute_name placeholder

  The following table lists valid values for attribute_name in the attribute_name"> element.

  Values for attribute_name	Description	Valid content values
  alternate_hotel_id	An alternate identifier for your property. Having separate IDs is useful if you might need one property identifier for your feed information and another property identifier for your booking engine.	Any string value
  	Deprecated: Any string type custom attribute. These are not displayed to users.	Any string value
  hotel_brand	The brand to which this hotel belongs. For example, "Marriott" or "Hilton". This is not displayed to users but can be used for grouping hotels.	Follow RFC 3986 (URI Generic Syntax): Allowed characters: A-Z a-z 0-9 - _ . ~ (space) Restricted characters: : / ? # [ ] @ ! $ & ' ( ) * + , ; = %
  lodging	Encoded representation of all fields available in the Lodging proto.	Base64-encoded string of the encoded Lodging proto
  num_reviews	Number of reviews of the listing. Key Point: "num_reviews" should only be sent for Vacation Rental feeds.	Any non-negative integer.
  rating	A floating point number representing the aggregate property rating.	This number is typically from 0-5, 0-10, or 0-100, but you can use any range that represents your rating system. For example, the property rating should be 3 or 4 for a rating_scale of 5. Note: The default rating_scale is 0-10 if unspecified.

  Values for the attribute_name placeholder for Vacation Rentals

  Refer to Vacation Rentals-specific attributes and XML example.

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  Images are used to show the property in the listing ID. All images used must follow these guidelines:

  • The recommended aspect ratio for images is 4:3.
  • The image URL must be accessible by the Googlebot Image crawler.

  • If your site includes a robots.txt at the root level, verify that it contains one of the two options shown:

    1. Allows the Googlebot crawler to crawl your site's content, images included.

       • User-agent: Googlebot
       • Allow: /

    2. Allows the Googlebot Image crawler to crawl the images on your site.

       • User-agent: Googlebot-Image
       • Allow: /

  • Screenshots of images or websites aren't permitted. Images must be original and actual images or photographs.

  • Photos shouldn't feature large blocks of text, logos, or watermarks.

  Attributes

  • "ad" if the image is an advertisement
  • "menu" if the image is a restaurant menu
  • "photo" if the image is a photo of the business

  Attribute name	Required?	Format	Description
  type	Required	Text	An image must be one of the following:
  url	Required	Text	The URL of the full-sized image. Use the url attribute to specify the image to use on that page.
  width	Required	A non-negative integer	Width of the image, in pixels (greater than 720 pixels is recommended)
  height	Required	A non-negative integer	Height of the image, in pixels (greater than 720 pixels is recommended)

  Child elements

  Child element	Required?	Description
  	Requested, but required for local photo listings.	This tag contains the valid and up-to-date URL of the page on your site that the relevant image is on. It doesn't contain the URL for the image itself. Example:
  	Not required	The name of the author of the content. The value can either be a username or a full name in the format "Firstname Lastname."
  	Required	This tag identifies the date that the content item was created. You must enter a year, month, and day, as in the following example:

  Example

  The following example shows a partial hotel list with image tags:

   version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.gstatic.com/localfeed/local_feed.xsd">
    en
        
         type="photo" url="https://image_url" width="400" height="300">
          https://image_url
          
          Jessica Landlord
           month="6" day="7" year="2023"/>
        
      
    
    ...
  
  
  

  Syntax guidelines

  When creating an XML-based hotel list, use the following guidelines:

  • Validate your Hotel List XML files with Google's XSD Schema.

  • Use UTF-8 encoding. Specify this encoding schema by including the encoding attribute in your XML tag, as shown in the examples.

  • You can specify data values in your feed with CDATA sections. If you use CDATA sections, don't escape special characters.

  • Use escape codes for data values that are not in CDATA sections, including URLs. You can use either the entity code or the character code to represent these special characters. The following table lists common entity and character codes you can use:

    Character	Entity	Character Code
    Ampersand (&)	&	&
    Single Quote (')	'	'
    Double Quote (")	"	"
    Greater Than (>)	>	>
    Less Than (<)	<	<

  • Omit XML elements that doesn't contain data. For example, if you don't have the latitude and longitude for a hotel, you shouldn't include empty and elements.

  • Don't use HTML in your XML elements under any circumstances (even if it is escaped).

  • To validate your feed prior to uploading, you can use the local feed XSD http://www.gstatic.com/localfeed/local_feed.xsd.

  • To use comments in your feed, wrap the comment in tags, as the following example shows:

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  Last updated 2026-07-16 UTC.