Starting April 16, 2020, Yext will no longer accept Google My Business Attributes for any Location entities with a Hotel category. Instead, you must convert your Location entities to Hotel entities to populate new Hotel-specific fields. 

What’s changing and why

In Fall 2019, Google started accepting over 100 new fields that are specific to hotels. Examples include if you offer free wifi, have a jacuzzi in-suite, or if parking is available. To help you take advantage of this change, we’ve unlocked these new fields in Yext by introducing a new “Hotel” entity type. With this change, Google has deprecated all of the Google My Business Attributes for hotels, and instead expects any hotel-specific values to be sent as part of the new Hotel entity type.  Starting April 16, 2020, Yext will deprecate the existing Google My Business Attributes for any entities with Hotel categories.  To continue to sync this hotel-specific information to Google, you must convert your Location entities to Hotel entities and populate the new Hotel fields. 

What you need to do

Between now and April 16, 2020, convert all of your hotels that are currently stored as Location entities to Hotel entities and update your integrations to populate the new Hotel fields instead of Google My Business Attributes. You should also update your integration to create Hotel entities instead of Location entities for any Hotels you would like to add to Yext.

• Step 1: Enable the new Hotel entity type in Account Settings by navigating to “Manage Entity Types” screen and clicking “Enable” next to “Hotel.”
• Step 2: Convert all of your entities that should be hotels to Hotel entities. Please use extra caution when converting your entity types, as you will not be able to reverse this change.
  • In Platform: You can do this by logging into Yext and navigating to Knowledge Manager.  For each entity, there is a field in the “Internal Use Only” section called “Entity Type” — select “Hotel” from the dropdown and click “Save.”  This can be done individually or in bulk.  
  • Via API: Set “hotel” instead of “location” in the “EntityType” field to change an entity from Location to Hotel type.
  • Note: Before doing this, you may want to use the Entity Export tool to download all of your current Google My Business Attribute values. Once you convert Locations to Hotels, you will lose access to the Google My Business Attribute fields for those entities.
• Step 3: Update the new Hotel entity type fields instead of the Google My Business Attributes for hotels.  Please see the mapping below and reference the Knowledge API documentation for field details.

 

Keyword ID	GMB Attribute	Hotel Entity Profile Field
15033	Airport shuttle	Airport Shuttle
15815	All-inclusive	All Inclusive
15042	Baggage storage	Baggage Storage
14989	Bar onsite	Bar
15106	Beach access	Beach Access
15125	Bicycle rental	Bicycles
15034	Business center	Business Center
15101	Car rental	Car Rental
15121	Cash-only	Payment Options > Cash
15321	Casino	Casino
15678	Chauffeur service	Private Car Service
15117	Checks	Payment Options > Checks
15044	Concierge	Concierge
15035	Convenience store	Convenience Store
15045	Currency exchange	Currency Exchange
15320	Doctor onsite	Doctor On Call
15032	Dogs allowed	Dogs Allowed
15036	Fitness center	Fitness Center
15760	Free breakfast	Breakfast
15127	Game room	Game Room
15102	Gift shop	Gift Shop
15759	Golf course	Golf
15763	Good for kids	Kid Friendly
15128	Horseback riding	Horseback Riding
15046	Hot tub	Hot Tub
15049	Laundry service	Laundry
15051	Massage services	Massage
15104	Nightclub	Nightclub
12982	Payments	Payment Options
13335	Payments	Payment Options
15054	Pets welcome	Pets allowed
15107	Private beach	Private Beach
15758	Restaurant	Restaurant Count
15037	Room service	Room Service
15103	Sauna	Sauna
15130	Scuba diving	Scuba
15761	Smoke-free property	Smoke Free Property
15131	Snorkeling	Snorkeling
15057	Spa	Spa
15319	Tennis court	Tennis
15827	Veteran-Led	Highlights > Veteran-Led
15313	Wake-up service	Wake Up Calls
15132	Water skiing	Water skiing
15038	Wheelchair accessible elevator	Accessibility Details > Accessible elevator
15040	Wheelchair accessible parking lot	Accessibility Details > Accessible parking
15791	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi Available

Questions?

If you have any questions about this change, please contact your Customer Success Manager or our API support team.