Google hotel attributes: what they are and how to fix yours

Google hotel attributes are the structured facts Google shows about your property in Search and Maps: amenities, policies, parking, accessibility, room counts and more. You can edit most of them yourself, for free, in the Hotel details section of a verified Business Profile. This guide explains where the attributes come from, which ones you control, how to change them, and how to keep them accurate over time.

TL;DR

Attributes are structured facts such as pet policy, parking, Wi-Fi and pools. Google shows them on your listing and uses them to match searches for places with those features.
You can edit services and amenities in Hotel details, but only on a verified hotel Business Profile.
Some attributes come from Google or from guests, so they can appear, change or disappear without your input. Check them on a schedule.
Hotel highlights, descriptions, star class and review summaries are not all yours to write. Know which parts you can change and which you can only influence.
Vacation rentals and tour operators sit in different categories and have different eligibility rules. Do not assume hotel features apply to you.

What Google hotel attributes are
Where Google gets the data
Do attributes affect how visible you are?
Check that you are eligible and verified
How to edit your hotel attributes
The attributes that deserve your attention first
When attributes conflict with your website
Attributes, Hotel Center and free booking links
Vacation rentals and tour operators
Keep attributes accurate over time
Where to see how this plays out in your market
FAQ
Sources

What Google hotel attributes are

An attribute is a single, checkable fact about a place. “Free Wi-Fi” is an attribute. So is “pets allowed,” “on-site parking,” “outdoor pool” or “wheelchair accessible entrance.” Google stores these as structured data instead of free text, which lets it filter, compare and summarize them across thousands of properties.

The scope is wide. Google’s lodging format schema covers property structure, services, food and drink, pools, wellness, accessibility, pet policies, parking and connectivity. It also includes details that owners often forget they can supply: the year the property was built, the year of its last renovation, the total number of guest-bookable rooms and the number of floors in the building.

That list tells you what Google is capable of knowing about your hotel. Whether it actually shows each item depends on what has been provided and verified. A boutique property with a complete, accurate record gives Google more to work with than one that left half the fields empty.

Attributes, highlights, descriptions and ratings are different things

Owners often lump several different elements of a listing together. Separate them, because you handle each one differently.

Element	What it is	Who controls it
Attributes and amenities	Structured facts such as pet policy, parking, pool	You, in Hotel details, plus some Google and guest input
Hotel highlights	Icons such as “Pet Friendly” or “Free Wi-Fi” for a quick glance	Google decides; not guaranteed for every hotel
Hotel description	A short summary of the property	Google’s internal writing team
Review summary	Aggregated scores and summaries drawn from reviews across the web	A review provider working with Google, based on guest reviews
Hotel class	A 1 to 5 star rating assigned by Google	Google, separate from guest review scores

The Google Business Profile help page on hotel details says highlights use bright, colorful icons to show amenities at a glance, and that they are not guaranteed for every hotel. The Hotel Center FAQ for hotel owners explains that descriptions are written by Google’s own team, that review summaries and aggregate scores for some listings come from TrustYou using reviews from across the web, and that hotel class uses a 1 to 5 star scale that is distinct from user review ratings.

The practical lesson: you cannot type your own marketing description into the hotel summary. What you can do is get the underlying facts right, so that whatever Google summarizes is correct.

Where Google gets the data

There is no single source. Google’s attribute documentation says attributes vary by category and country and can change at any time, and that Google-updated attributes may come from Google’s own updates or from user-generated content. The same page notes that developers are expected to retrieve the attribute list frequently, because the available set is dynamic.

In plain terms, your listing’s attributes can come from four places:

You. Anything you enter in Hotel details.
Your booking or channel partners. Connected systems can send property and room content to Google.
Google itself. It may infer or add facts from other sources.
Guests. Google says some attributes may be populated from inputs by customers who visit the business.

This is why a hotel can find a “Pet Friendly” tag when it has never allowed pets. Nobody on your team typed it. Treat the listing as a shared document that other people can edit, and review it the way you review your own website.

Why it matters beyond the listing

Travelers do not only see these facts on a Google results page. AI answers lean on structured, consistent facts about a property. If Google says you have a pool and your website says you do not, both the traveler and the AI have a reason to skip you. The same is true for parking, pet fees and check-in rules. Our free course and visibility check, both linked from the StayStrategy homepage, walk through how to test what AI tools currently say about your property so you can see which wrong facts are spreading.

Do attributes affect how visible you are?

Google is careful on this point, and you should be too. Its help page says that adding certain attributes may help a business show up in searches for places with those attributes. That is a matching effect, not a ranking guarantee. If a traveler searches for “pet friendly boutique hotel” and your pet policy is blank, Google has no structured reason to include you.

For properties that send data through a connectivity partner, Google’s guidance to those partners is that properties with comprehensive, updated property and room content perform better with users on Google platforms. That is Google’s perspective, not a measured number, but it points the same way as common sense: a fuller record answers more of the questions travelers type.

So the goal is not to tick every box. It is to be accurate and complete on the facts that decide a booking for your kind of guest.

Check that you are eligible and verified

Before you edit anything, confirm two things.

You must be authorized and verified. Google states that you need to be authorized to manage the hotel’s Business Profile, and the profile must be verified before you can manage the hotel’s business information. If a former manager or agency set up the profile, find out who the owner is before you start. Recovering access is much slower than checking it now.

Your property must count as lodging. Google’s lodging category rules say a lodging business must accept overnight guests, have a front desk and an on-site manager or owner, and publicly list its business address and property name. Google groups lodging into hotels, vacation rentals and outdoor lodging. Hotel categories include motels, hostels, resort hotels, inns, bed and breakfasts and farm stays.

If you run a boutique inn, a B&B or a small hotel with a staffed desk, you are in the hotel group. If you run scattered short-term rentals with no front desk, you are in a different category, and the hotel tools may not apply to you. More on that below.

How to edit your hotel attributes

Google’s own steps for a verified hotel profile are short. Per the Business Profile help page:

Go to your Business Profile.
Select Hotel details.
Search for the attribute you want to add and fill in the information.
Select Save.

If Google’s amenity summary is factually wrong, the same page says you can edit it in the dashboard. If an error stops you from changing it, you can contact Google support to get help.

Expect a review period

Edits are not always live instantly. Google says a review of attribute edits usually takes about 10 minutes, but can take up to 30 days. Do not re-submit the same change after an hour. Make the edit, note the date, and look again the following week.

A worked example

Picture a 14-room inn in a small mountain town. On the first audit, the owner finds four problems:

The listing shows “Pet Friendly,” but the inn only accepts dogs in two ground-floor rooms, with a fee.
Parking is listed as “free,” but the lot is shared with a restaurant and fills up on weekends.
The pool is listed as “indoor,” but it is outdoors and closed in winter.
No accessibility details are listed, although one room has a roll-in shower.

The fix is a few minutes in Hotel details for each item, followed by a matching update on the website and in any FAQ page. The owner then writes the specifics (dog rooms, fee, seasonal pool) in the property’s own words on the site. The structured attribute gives the quick yes or no. The site gives the nuance. Neither should contradict the other.

The attributes that deserve your attention first

You do not need to perfect every field in one sitting. Start with the facts that cause cancellations, bad reviews or lost searches when they are wrong.

Pets

Pet policy is both a filter and a frequent source of disputes. State whether pets are allowed, and put limits, fees and room restrictions on your website. If a guest arrives with a dog on the strength of an incorrect tag, you pay for it in reviews.

Parking

Parking is one of the attribute groups in Google’s schema, and it is where small hotels often get sloppy. Say whether parking is on-site, whether it is free, and whether valet is offered. For a closer look at how parking operations shape the guest experience, see this piece on hotel parking and valet operations. The same facts should read identically on your site, your listing and your confirmation emails.

Connectivity

“Free Wi-Fi” is one of the highlight icons Google gives as an example. If you charge a resort fee that covers Wi-Fi, do not tick “free” and hope nobody notices. Say what is true.

Pools, wellness and food and drink

The schema separates pools, wellness and food and drink into their own groups. Seasonal and by-reservation facilities need extra care. A breakfast that is served only on weekends is not “breakfast included.” Use the fields that match reality and put the details on your site.

Accessibility

Accessibility facts are among the most useful to the guests who need them and the most often left blank. Record what you actually have: step-free entrance, accessible parking, accessible rooms. Do not claim features you cannot back up. A wrong answer here does real harm to a guest who plans a trip around it.

Property facts

Build year, last renovation year, number of rooms and floors are small fields that make a listing look complete. A recent renovation also supports the story you tell elsewhere. Fill them in if the form offers them.

When attributes conflict with your website

An attribute problem is rarely only a Google problem. The more places your facts differ, the more likely a traveler or an AI tool picks the wrong one. Run this check once a quarter:

Open your Business Profile and list every attribute shown.
Open your website’s amenities, policies and FAQ pages.
Compare the same facts in your booking engine and any channel listings.
Note every mismatch and decide which version is true.
Fix the source first, then the copies.

Schema markup on your own site is the other half of this. Google’s lodging schema is the vocabulary its own hotel systems use, which is a useful guide to which facts to put in plain, consistent language on your pages. Keep your amenity wording identical across the site so there is only one version to learn.

Attributes, Hotel Center and free booking links

Attributes on your Business Profile are separate from the rates and availability feed that powers booking links and hotel ads. They meet in one place: your identity data. Google’s hotel inventory setup guide says partners supply hotel list data in CSV or XML with property details including name and address, and that a phone number or latitude and longitude is required. It also says the hotel list data must match information in Google Maps’ own list of businesses to be published successfully.

That has a direct consequence. If your name, address or phone number differs between your Business Profile, your booking engine and your feed, matching can fail and your rates may not appear. Settle the exact spelling of your property name and address first, and use it everywhere.

Whether to use free booking links, paid hotel ads or both is a separate decision with its own costs. It is worth making only after your profile facts are clean, since a click that lands on wrong information wastes the money you spent to get it.

Vacation rentals and tour operators

The hotel attribute tools are built for lodging that fits Google’s hotel definition: guests stay overnight, there is a front desk and an on-site owner or manager, and the address and name are public. Many short-term rental operators do not meet that bar. Many tour and activity operators are not lodging at all.

What this means for you:

Short-term rental operators should check Google’s category rules before assuming the Hotel details section is available. Vacation rentals are a separate lodging group, and the facts travelers see for them come from different programs. Your own site and the major rental platforms matter more for amenity detail.
Tour and activity operators use regular Business Profile attributes, which vary by business category. Open your profile, look at the attributes offered for your category and fill in the ones that apply, such as accessibility or payment options. Do not copy a hotel checklist.

In both cases the principle holds. Put your facts in every structured field you are offered, keep them consistent with your website, and review them when conditions change.

Keep attributes accurate over time

Google’s documentation is blunt that attributes can change at any time. A one-time cleanup is not enough. Build a short routine:

Monthly: open your profile and scan the attribute list for anything you did not enter.
After every change: renovation, new pet rule, new parking arrangement, new seasonal hours. Update Hotel details the same week.
Before peak season: confirm pools, patios, restaurant hours and parking.
After a staff change: make sure at least two people hold access to the profile.

Write down who owns this task. Attribute errors survive because everyone assumes someone else looked.

Where to see how this plays out in your market

What guests ask about, and what competing properties list, differs by city. The city reports on StayStrategy show how properties in specific markets appear when travelers ask AI tools where to stay, so you can see which amenities and policies get mentioned where you operate. Use them to decide which attributes to complete first.

FAQ

What are the key attributes of a hotel on Google?

Google’s lodging schema groups them into property structure, services, food and drink, pools, wellness, accessibility, pet policies, parking and connectivity. It also covers build year, last renovation year, room count and floor count. Which ones show on your listing depends on what has been entered and verified.

Can I edit my hotel attributes myself?

Yes, if you have a verified hotel Business Profile and are authorized to manage it. Open Hotel details, search for the attribute, fill it in and save. Google reviews edits, which usually takes about 10 minutes but can take up to 30 days.

Why does my listing show an amenity I do not offer?

Some attributes come from Google updates or from guest input, not from you. If the information is factually wrong, you can edit it in your dashboard. If an error blocks the change, contact Google support.

Can I write my own hotel description on Google?

Not for the summary Google shows. Google says its hotel descriptions are written by its own internal team. Your control is over the facts underneath, which feed those summaries, and over the copy on your own website.

Do vacation rentals get the same hotel attributes?

Not automatically. Google treats hotels, vacation rentals and outdoor lodging as separate groups, and hotel eligibility requires a front desk and an on-site owner or manager. Check the category rules for your property type before you plan around hotel features.