actor-booking-scraper

Apify actor for extracting data about hotels from Booking.com.

Booking.com provides various types of accommodation all around the world. The user interface
is quite friendly for a human user, however to get the data in a machine processable format
is not a simple task, since there is no official Booking.com API. This is where this new Apify
actor comes in handy.

This actor extracts hotel data from Booking.com, it can either extract directly from
the hotel list page or navigate to the detail page to get more detailed information.
The results can be ordered by any criteria supported by Booking.com.

Since Booking.com allows only 1000 search results, in case you need to download more,
you will need to utilize the useFilters attribute to tell the crawler to enqueue all the criteria
filtered pages. This will overcome the limit, but will significantly increase the crawling time.

Input attributes

Input is a JSON object with the following properties:

{
    "search": SEARCH_QUERY,
    "simple": EXTRACT_FROM_LIST,
    "useFilters": USE_CRITERIA_FILTERING,
    "minScore": MINIMUM_HOTEL_RATING,
    "maxPages": MAXIMUM_PAGINATION_PAGES,
    "concurrency": MAXIMUM_CONCURRENT_PAGES,
    "checkIn": CHECK_IN_DATE, 
    "checkOut": CHECK_OUT_DATE, 
    "rooms": NUMBER_OF_ROOMS,
    "adults": NUMBER_OF_ADULTS,
    "children": NUMBER_OF_CHILDREN,
    "currency": PREFERRED_CURRENCY,
    "language": PREFERRED_LANGUAGE,
    "sortBy": BOOKING_SORT_TYPE,
    "proxyConfig": APIFY_PROXY_CONFIG
}

• search is the only required attribute. This is the Booking.com search query.
• simple defines if the data should be extracted just from the list page, default is false.
• useFilters sets if the crawler should utilize criteria filters to overcome the limit for 1000 results.
• minScore specifies the minimum allowed rating of the hotel to be included in results, default is 8.4.
• maxPages sets maximum number of pagination pages to be crawled.
• checkIn check-in date in the mm-dd-yyyy format.
• checkOut check-out date in the mm-dd-yyyy format.
• rooms number of rooms to be set for the search.
• adults number of adults to be set for the search.
• children number of children to be set for the search.
• currency preferred currency code to be set on the site.
• language preferred language code to be set on the site.
• proxyConfig defines Apify proxy configuration, it should respect this format:

"proxyConfig": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": [
        "RESIDENTIAL",
        ...
    ]
}

• sortBy sets a hotel attribute by which the results will be ordered, must be one of the following.

[
    "bayesian_review_score",    // Rating
    "popularity",               // Popularity
    "price",                    // Price
    "review_score_and_price",   // Rating and price
    "class",                    // Stars
    "class_asc",                // Stars ascending
    "distance_from_landmark"    // Distance from city centre
]

Starting with URLs

Instead of search INPUT attribute, it is also possible to start the crawler with an array of startUrls.
In such case all the other attributes modifying the URLs will still be applied, it is therefore suggested to
use simple urls and set all the other options using INPUT attributes instead of leaving them in the URL to
avoid URL parameter clashing.
In case the startUrl is a hotel detail page, it will be scraped. In case it is a hotel list page, the result
will depend on the simple attribute. If it's true, the page will be scraped, otherwise all the links to
detail pages will be added to the queue and scraped afterwards.
The startUrls attribute should cotain an array of URLs as follows:

{
    "startUrls": [
        "https://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/ariane-montparnasse.en-gb.html",
        "https://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/heliosopera.en-gb.html",
        "https://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/ritz-paris-paris.en-gb.html",
        ...
    ],
    "simple": false,
    "minScore": 8.4,
    ...
}

Output examples

In case of using the simple INPUT attribute, an example output for a single hotel can look like this:

{
  "url": "https://www.booking.com/hotel/cz/elia-ky-kra-snohorska-c-apartments-prague.en-gb.html",
  "name": "Centrum Apartments Old Town",
  "rating": 10,
  "reviews": 7,
  "stars": 4,
  "price": 86,
  "currency": "€",
  "roomType": "Deluxe Three-Bedroom Apartment with Terrace",
  "persons": 4,
  "address": "Prague 01, Prague",
  "location": {
    "lat": "14.4199419021606",
    "lng": "50.0903216331068"
  }
}

Otherwise the output will be much more comprehensive, especially the rooms array, which will however
contain data only if the checkIn and checkOut INPUT attributes are set.

{
  "url": "https://www.booking.com/hotel/cz/elia-ky-kra-snohorska-c-apartments-prague.en-gb.html",
  "name": "Centrum Apartments Old Town",
  "type": "Apartment",
  "description": "Situated in the centre of Prague in a historical building near the Pařížská street, 500 metres from the Old Town Square, the Pragueaparts Old town E offers...",
  "stars": "4",
  "rating": 10,
  "reviews": 7,
  "breakfast": null,
  "checkIn": "15:00",
  "checkOut": "00:00",
  "location": {
    "lat": "50.0903216",
    "lng": "14.4199419"
  },
  "address": {
    "full": "Elišky Krásnohorské 2, Prague, 11000, Czech Republic",
    "postalCode": "11000",
    "street": "Elišky Krásnohorské 2",
    "country": "Czech Republic",
    "region": ""
  },
  "image": "https://t-ec.bstatic.com/images/hotel/max1024x768/183/183313960.jpg",
  "rooms": [
    {
      "available": true,
      "roomType": "Deluxe Three-Bedroom Apartment with Terrace",
      "bedType": " Bedroom 1: 1 extra-large double bed Bedroom 2: 2 single beds Bedroom 3: 3 single beds and 1 sofa bed ",
      "persons": 1,
      "price": 85.54,
      "currency": "€",
      "features": [
        "80 m²",
        "City view",
        "Terrace",
        "Flat-screen TV",
        "Air conditioning",
        "Private bathroom",
        ...
      ],
      "conditions": [
        "Non-refundable"
      ]
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Notes

• The actor will not work without proxy, i.e. if you try running it without setting a proxy, it will fail with a message explaining exactly that.

• Booking.com will only display maximum of 1000 results, if you need to circumvent this limitation,
  you can utilize the useFilters INPUT attribute. However, in such case it will not be possible
  to use any limiting filters in start URLs, because the scraper will override those.

• If you need to get data about specific rooms, the crawler needs to be started with checkIn and
  checkOut INPUT attributes (Booking.com only shows room info for specific dates).