Can you pull turnover photos from the Hostaway API?

01What the API actually returns for a task

According to Hostaway's public API reference, the platform shipped task endpoints in August 2023. You authenticate, then call GET /v1/tasks for a list or GET /v1/tasks/{taskId} for one task. Here is the full task object as published in that reference, with one thing worth noticing.

{
  "id": 1,
  "listingMapId": null,
  "reservationId": null,
  "assigneeUserId": null,
  "supervisorUserId": null,
  "title": "Departure clean",
  "description": null,
  "status": "completed",        // pending | confirmed | inProgress | completed | cancelled
  "canStartFromEvent": "departure",
  "completedAt": "2026-06-14 11:40:00",
  "resolutionNote": null,
  "feedbackScore": null,
  "cost": null,
  "checklistItems": [],
  "customFieldValue": [],
  "categoriesMap": null          // category codes when set: 1 cleaning, 2 maintenance, 3 check-in, 4 check-out...
  // no "attachments", "photos", "files", or "images" field exists on this object
}

That is the whole shape (trimmed for length; the real object adds more timing and ranking fields, none of them media). According to Hostaway's published task schema, a task tells you that a clean happened, who did it, and when, but never what it looked like. The checklistItems array holds checklist line items, not photos, and in the documented examples it is empty. There is no GET /v1/tasks/{id}/attachments route anywhere in the reference.

02The capability matrix

Here is what the Hostaway API does and does not hand you, mapped to what an operator building an inspection pipeline actually wants.

The last row is the trap worth naming. Hostaway absolutely exposes photos through its listing image endpoints, so a quick skim of the docs can make it look solved. But those are the staged marketing photos you show guests on Airbnb, with caption, vrboCaption, and sortOrder fields. They have nothing to do with the condition of the unit after a checkout.

03The one indirect path, and why it is not an export

The API does model file attachments. According to Hostaway's published attachment-object schema, they appear in the attachments array on conversation messages, the guest-messaging surface. To populate it you must add ?includeResources=1 to the request, otherwise nested resources come back empty. Each attachment looks like this:

That taskId field is genuinely interesting: it proves Hostaway's data model can associate a file with a task. But notice what is missing. There is no endpoint that says "give me every attachment for task 1234." You would have to walk conversations, pull messages with includeResources=1, and filter attachments by taskId yourself, and only the attachments that happen to ride along a conversation message would surface at all. That is a messaging feature, not a turnover-photo pipeline.

04For completeness: auth and the task list call

None of the above means the API is weak. It is well-built for what it covers. Authentication is OAuth2 client-credentials: you exchange your Hostaway account ID and API key for a bearer token that is valid for 24 months.

# mint a token (valid 24 months)
curl -X POST https://api.hostaway.com/v1/accessTokens \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials" \
  -d "client_id=YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID" \
  -d "client_secret=YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d "scope=general"

# then list completed tasks
curl https://api.hostaway.com/v1/tasks?status=completed \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

So a realistic, fully-supported Hostaway integration can tell you that the departure clean for a reservation is marked complete, who completed it, and when. It simply cannot tell you whether the unit is actually in good condition, because the photographic evidence never crosses the API boundary.

05So how do operators get turnover photos into AI?

If the goal is automated damage detection on every turnover, the practical answer is to stop treating the PMS as the photo source and capture the images where they can actually flow into an AI step.

06Will this change?

Possibly, and the API itself hints at it. The presence of a taskId on the attachment object means Hostaway's data model already links files to tasks; exposing a clean task-attachment endpoint would be a natural extension. Until Hostaway publishes one, treat turnover task photos as not retrievable through the public API. If you are scoping a build that depends on it, confirm current behavior with Hostaway's API or partnerships team rather than assuming, because undocumented behavior can change without notice. Everything on this page reflects Hostaway's published API reference as of June 14, 2026.