Use the Google Places API to retrieve hotel and POI details and photos within quota

Verified steps

1. Enable the Places API in Google Cloud Console and ensure your API key has the Places API scope; restrict the key by HTTP referrer or IP to prevent unauthorized use.
2. Search for a property using Place Search (Text Search or Nearby Search): POST to https://places.googleapis.com/v1/places:searchText with a JSON body containing textQuery (e.g. 'Hotel name, City') and specify desired fields in the X-Goog-FieldMask header to minimize billed SKUs.
3. Retrieve full place details via GET https://places.googleapis.com/v1/places/{place_id} with X-Goog-FieldMask listing only the fields you need (e.g. displayName,rating,reviews,photos,regularOpeningHours,priceLevel).
4. To fetch a photo, use the photo resource name from the photos[] array: GET https://places.googleapis.com/v1/{photo_name}/media?maxWidthPx=800&key=... — this returns a redirect to the actual image; cache the image URL, not the resource name, as resource names are stable but signed URLs are temporary.
5. Respect the quota: Places API (New) bills per field mask — requesting all fields on every detail call is expensive; request only what you display and cache aggressively (24h TTL for static details like address, photos).
6. For hotel-specific data, check the place type includes 'lodging' and use the priceLevel and rating fields for sorting, but supplement with live pricing from a hotel API — Google Places does not return bookable rates.