Scraping Tripadvisor can be easy depending on the web scraper you use. Come in now and discover some of the best Tripadvisor scrapers you can use to collect travel guidance-related data on Tripadvisor.
When it comes to the travel guidance and booking website list, the Tripadvisor website rules them all with over 500 million unique visitors monthly. In terms of the content on their website, the metrics also favor the website.
Visitors can get over 934 million reviews and 8 million opinions of businesses in the hospitality business. The website is available in 43 markets and 22 languages. Whether you are looking to get data on flight tickets, hotel accommodation, and other hospitality rentals, the Tripadvisor website is the one-stop-shop for all of them.
For this reason, Tripadvisor has become a major source of data for travel fare, hotel recommendations, and other hospitality data aggregator websites. If you are one of those persons looking to extract data from the Tripadvisor website then you are on the right page as we would be providing you information on how to get it done.
It might interest you to know that you do not need to know how to write a single line of code to scrape Tripadvisor – thanks to the presence of already-made scrapers for non-coders. If you are a coder, we would provide you with a guide on how to develop your own custom Tripadvisor website.
Tripadvisor Scraping – an Overview
Tripadvisor scraping is the process of using computer bots known as web scrapers to automate the process of extracting data from Tripadvisor web pages. The web scraper that has support for scraping Tripadvisor is known as Tripadvisor scraper and that is what we would be discussing in this article.
The use of web scrapers to extract data from the Tripadvisor website is an aggressive method of collecting data from the giant’s website as it involves sending too many requests within a short period of time. However, there is no other better alternative as Tripadvisor does not provide an API to provide interested users with the data they need.
Scraping involves sending an HTTP request to download the whole content of a page, then using a data parser to extract the required data which is then saved or use immediately. Tripadvisor does not support such on their website as it adds to their running cost without adding any value to them aside from getting their content extracted.
However, the act is not illegal and as such, you aren’t breaking any law when you scrape Tripadvisor. You just need to know that you will not be allowed until you are able to bypass Tripadvisor’s anti-spam system. For already-made scrapers for non-coders, do not need all the details but if you are coding a custom web scraper for Tripadvisor, you will need to know how to get that done.
How to Scrape Tripadvisor for Travel and Hospitality Data Using Python
This section has been written for coders. If you do not have a coding skill or aren’t ready to develop a custom Tripadvisor yourself, then you should move to the next section where you will see recommendations on the best web scrapers to use. For this section, we would be giving you guidance on how to code a Tripadvisor scraper yourself.
You can use any programming language of your choice to code a web scraper provided the programming language has a way of sending HTTP requests and a parser to extract data from web pages. In this guide, we would be using Python and its associated third-party libraries for web scraping.
The libraries we would be using are Requests for sending HTTP requests and Beautifulsoup for parsing. For you to effectively know how to use these two, you will need to make use read the documentation of the two libraries – the documentations have been linked to at the mention of their names above.
One thing you need to know about scraping Tripadvisor that makes it easy for scraping is that it works even without Javascript. For a website that depends on Javascript to render its content, you cannot use Requests and Beautifulsoup – you will need to use another library/framework that renders Javascript and Selenium is the framework of choice for Python developers. NodeJS developers would use Puppeteer.
Read more, Puppeteer Vs. Selenium: What are the differences?
As stated earlier, Tripadvisor does not support scraping. Unfortunately, because of the large dataset on their website, they have become one of the biggest targets of web scrapers and as such, the team behind the website has developed an effective anti-spam system to discourage scraping. As a developer developing a custom Tripadvisor scraper, you will need to bypass this anti-spam system. One of the measures you need to integrate is using proxies.
For Tripadvisor, I will advise you to use rotating residential proxies from either Bright Data, Smartproxy, or Soax. Other techniques to bypass the anti-spam system include rotating user agent strings, set random delays between requests, and make sure you have the essential headers set up in Requests.
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Sample Code for Scraping Tripadvisor
Below is a code sample showing you a basic Tripadvisor scraper that scrapes details of hotels. The class accepts the URL of a hotel as a parameter and then using its methods, it extracts the name of the hotel, the address, description, and starting price. The code is quite basic and does not integrate any advanced features such as exception handling, and bypassing anti-scraping blocks.
So if you try running it to scrape many pages, you will get blocked after scraping a few pages. For this code to run, you need to have installed Requests and Beautifulsoup. Use the pip command to install both.
pip install requests pip install beautifulsoup
With both Requests and Beautifulsoup installed, you can now run the code.
# import both Requests and Beautifulsoup
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
class TripHotelScraper:
def __init__(self, url):
self.url = url
self.download_page()
def download_page(self):
# method for downloading the hotel page
self.page = requests.get(self.url).text
def scrape_data(self):
#method for scraping out hotel name, address, and about
soup = BeautifulSoup(self.page, "html.parser")
hotel_name = soup.find("h1", {"id": "HEADING"}).text
hotel_address = soup.find("span", {"class": "eWZDY _S eCdbd yYjkv"}).text
hotel_about = soup.find("div", {"class": "pIRBV _T"}).text
return {"name": hotel_name,
"about": hotel_about,
"address": hotel_address
}
urls = ["https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g186338-d1803696-Reviews-Hotel_Indigo_London_Tower_Hill_an_IHG_hotel-London_England.html",]
for url in urls:
x = TripHotelScraper(url)
print(x.scrape_data())
You may be like to read,
- How to Scrape Expedia Travel Data with Python
- Airbnb Scraper 101: How to Scrape Airbnb Data with Python
Best Tripadvisor Scrapers in the Market
In this section of the article, we would be recommending some of the best web scrapers you can use for scraping Tripadvisor without creating your own from the scratch. 4 out of the 5 web scrapers described below can be used by non-coders as you are not required to write a single of code. It is the only one that is meant for programmers.
Bright Data’s Data Collector
- Pricing: Starts at $500 for 151K page loads
- Free Trials: Available
- Data Output Format: Excel
- Supported Platforms: Web-based
The Data Collector tool is one of the best web scrapers in the market that you can use to scrape Tripadvisor. This tool is provided by Bright Data, the proxy service giant known for its undetected residential proxies. One thing you will come to like about Data Collector is that it does not require you to write a single line of code. It also does not require you to download any software – it is accessible on the website from the Bright Data user dashboard.
All you will need to do to start scraping data from the Tripadvisor website is to select the elements you want to scrape and you get the data you want. Pricing for this is pay as you go but you will need to add funds to your account before you can use it.
Octoparse
- Pricing: Starts at $75 per month
- Free Trials: 14 days of free trial with limitations
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON, MySQL, SQLServer
- Supported Platform: Cloud, Desktop
If you do not have a coding skill and you want to scrape Tripadvisor then Octoparse is the best web scraper to use. This is because it is a visual scraping tool that provides you an easy-to-use point-and-click interface for identifying data of interest and then the tool automatically identifies other similar elements for you on the page.
Octoparse is a general web scraping tool that you can use to scrape all kinds of sites including Tripadvisor. For Tripadvisor, there is a well-detailed article on the Octoparse tutorial site that shows how to scrape Tripadvisor using Octoparse. Octoparse has a cloud platform that enables access to scraping service 24/7 if you do not want to use their installable application on your computer.
WebHarvy
- Pricing: Starts at $139 for a single user license
- Free Trials: Not available
- Data Output Format: TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, XML. TSV, etc.
- Supported Platforms: Desktop
Another web scraper you can use to scrape Tripadvisor is the WebHarvy scraping tool. This scraper is a general web scraper that you can use to scrape any website on the Internet. Being a generic web scraper, you can easily configure it to scrape Tripadvisor. While it is a paid scraper, you can use the evaluation copy to try out the service.
There is even a guide on how to scrape Tripadvisor using WebHarvy on its website. This web scraper is an intuitive web scraper that looks simple but quite powerful. It is incredibly easy to use and can even handle scraping data behind logins and other form submissions. It comes with a scheduler, and you will need to add proxies yourself. It also has an intelligence pattern detection system and has support for downloading scrap data in either file or database.
Apify Tripadvisor Scraper
- Pricing: Starts at $49 per month for 100 Actor compute units
- Free Trials: Starter plan comes with 10 Actor compute units
- Data Output Format: JSON
- Supported OS: cloud-based – accessed via API
With this, you can scrape restaurants and hotels, fetch the reviews for businesses listed, get their pricing, content, and address, and many other details. In terms of data export format, you can download the data in CSV, JSON, XML, Excel, RSS feed, and HTML table. Apify requires proxies to function and you can either buy residential proxies from Apify or use proxies from other top providers such as Bright Data and Smartproxy.
ParseHub
- Pricing: Free with a paid plan
- Free Trials: Free – advance features come at an extra cost
- Data Output Format: Excel, JSON,
- Supported Platform: Cloud, Desktop
ParseHub is the last on our list and it is geared toward those that do not have a budget for scraping. ParseHub is a free web scraper that has been designed for scraping the modern web. It is a generic scraper that you can use o scrape any website but you will be the one to provide proxies and I would advise you to use rotating residential proxies from Bright Data or Smartproxy.
In 3 steps, you can start using ParseHub to extract data from Tripadvisor – use the ParseHub desktop application to open the Tripadvisor web page, click on the data you want to scrape using the point and click interface provided, and then download the result. It also does not require any coding skills and it is incredibly flexible. Interestingly, it also has a paid tool for advanced features like some of the above scrapers.
Conclusion
The above 5 web scrapers are only a few of the web scrapers you can use for scraping Tripadvisor. There are a good number of them in the market that are not on the list that works.
You can take the list as a list of the best web scrapers for Tripadvisor as tested by us. One thing I need to mention as a way of concluding this article is that you should be polite when scraping as it is one of the best practices of scraping – throttle the speed you scrape and set delays between requests.
