If your listings run on Hostaway, this page is the honest technical answer to "how would that actually work," not a sales page pretending the details don't matter.
What Hostaway's API actually exposes
Hostaway publishes a REST API at api.hostaway.com/v1, with JSON requests and responses throughout. Authentication is an OAuth2 client credentials grant: a POST to /v1/accessTokens with your account ID, client secret, and scope=general returns a token, and that token stays valid for 24 months. That's a real practical difference from most PMS integrations, where tokens expire in hours; a Hostaway integration doesn't need a refresh cycle built around daily re-authentication.
Every response follows the same envelope: a status field, the actual data in result, and pagination fields (limit, offset, count, page, totalPages). Two details worth knowing if you're building against it: booleans come back as integers (0 or 1, not true/false), and timestamps are UTC except check-in and check-out times, which use the listing's own local timezone. Small thing, but it's exactly the kind of detail that causes a subtle bug if you're not reading the docs closely.
Rate limits are enforced on two tiers at once: 15 requests per 10 seconds per IP address, and 20 per 10 seconds per account ID. Go over either and you get an HTTP 429, so an integration polling aggressively across multiple listings needs to pace itself against both limits, not just one.
What a listing and reservation record actually contain
Listing records carry the detail an agent actually needs to answer guest questions without guessing: personCapacity, bedrooms, bathrooms, check-in and check-out times, cancellation policy, amenities, bed types, and images, alongside the basics like address and price. Reservation records carry id, listingId, guest name, check-in and check-out dates, total price, status, the booking channel, and any custom field values the property has configured.
The cancellation policy field is worth calling out specifically. It means a guest asking "what's your cancellation policy" gets the property's actual configured answer, not a generic one that might not match what they agreed to at booking.
How the concierge agent uses this
Same pattern as every PMS this system supports: a guest message triggers an agent with tools, not a script. Mapped onto Hostaway, that looks like this.
Check Hostaway availability answers a date-range question against real inventory. Look up listing / reservation is what lets the agent quote the property's actual cancellation policy or confirm a booking's status, instead of a generic answer that might be wrong for that specific listing. Escalate to the team is the tool that matters most: anything that isn't a straightforward lookup goes to a person.
What a guest conversation actually looks like
We might need to cancel next week's stay. What's the cancellation policy?
This listing's cancellation policy is on your booking confirmation. If you'd like to go ahead with cancelling, or want to discuss an exception, I've let the team know so they can follow up with you directly.
Illustrative example, not a real guest conversation.
Where a human still needs to be in the loop
Cancellations, refunds, and any exception to a stated policy are decisions for a person with the authority to make them, not an agent following a tool call. The escalation path is a designed part of the system from the first version, the same way it is for every PMS this concierge pattern supports.
What this page is, and isn't. This describes Hostaway's public API and the integration architecture Attilus AI builds against it. It is not a claim that this is running live for a paying Hostaway client today; the concierge pattern is a tested demo, documented honestly as that on the About page. A client build swaps the demo's tools for your real Hostaway account and your real team's inbox.
The technical details above (base URL, authentication flow, rate limits, listing and reservation fields) are drawn directly from Hostaway's own developer documentation, not from undisclosed internals.
What a property needs to get started
A Hostaway account with API access, the account ID and client secret used to request an access token, and confirmation of which guest channels you want answered. The rest gets shaped on the intro call around how your operation actually runs.
Technical details in this page are drawn from Hostaway's public developer documentation at api.hostaway.com/documentation. See also the WebHotelier and Guesty integration breakdowns. Hostaway is a product of its respective owner; Attilus AI is not affiliated with Hostaway.