Answers · Data & reliability · 6 questions
Updated 25 Oct 2026 · Reviewed by Mohammad Shakir, Co-founder & CEO
A price is only as useful as it is fresh. These answers cover matching freshness to the decision, what vendors mean by real-time, measuring the age of every price you use, and the update bar Google sets for Hotel Ads.
Each answers a different question. Channel-manager data tells you your own rates, supplier APIs and feeds give contracted data, and collected public prices show what guests actually see. Pricing decisions usually need the last, checked against the others.
Use the guest-facing price for competitor comparison, and cross-check samples across sources.
Match freshness to the decision. Near dates and fast-moving markets need hourly or faster; far dates can be daily. Show the age of every price.
Travel prices change many times a day, so a stale comparison can mean showing a deal that is no longer competitive or discounting when you did not need to. Fresher data costs more, so spend it where prices move.
It means the price is fetched when you ask for it, not served from a stored copy. The response time and the age of the data are what to ask about.
Many "real-time" claims mean frequent refresh, not on-demand fetch. Ask for timestamps on every response.
Store the collection timestamp with every price and compute the difference to the current time when it is read. Report the age distribution, not only the average.
Reject or flag prices older than your threshold, and monitor the share of prices over the threshold as a health metric.
Google's guidance is to update prices frequently, several times a day, including taxes and fees, so the price shown matches your booking page. Check Google's current documentation for exact requirements.
Hotel Center reports a price update rate, and a failed status means no recent updates. Prioritise near dates and monitor for failed updates.
Google wants the price shown in results to match what the user finds after clicking. Mismatches such as missing taxes and fees, missing discounts, rooms not available or site errors hurt the score, which feeds into the ad auction.
Google lists mismatch reasons in Hotel Center, including "login missing". Fix taxes and fees display first, since it is a common cause, and keep your score at the top band.
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