Expedia is an excellent platform that enables users to compare flight and hotel prices from various providers. By specifying your destination, airports, and travel dates, Expedia efficiently finds appealing information. For travelers with flexible vacation schedules looking for the best time to travel, data scraping is undoubtedly a very useful tool to help determine the optimal travel times.
Scraping Expedia with Octoparse in Just a Few Clicks
Manually searching Expedia is time-consuming and often only provides a fraction of the available results. In contrast, web scraping offers access to comprehensive information. Since humans struggle to handle such vast amounts of data, web scraping tools are necessary for quickly collecting all the required information.
With web scraping, you can gather hotel names, prices, ratings, addresses, contact details, availability, and any other information listed on Expedia. Once the data is scraped, you can easily sort and filter it to find exactly what you need and determine the best time for your trip. This entire process is fully automated, making it efficient and convenient for users.
Setting Up a Task in Octoparse
In this article, we’ll show you how to use Octoparse to automate the scraping of Expedia, efficiently extracting hotel names, prices, addresses, current ratings, and images for each entry.
Obtain Comprehensive Results
First, open your preferred web browser and perform a search on Expedia. Enter the destination, check-in and check-out dates, and any other required details. Once you have the search results, copy the URL of the page into Octoparse’s built-in browser.
Make sure to configure Octoparse to extract data from all available result pages on Expedia. Click the “Show More” button as needed and activate the “Loop click the selected link” option in the Action Tips menu. This setup allows Octoparse to systematically navigate through all results and automate the scraping process effectively.
Access Detailed Pages for Each Hotel
Click on each hotel name displayed on the listing page until all titles are highlighted in green. Then, in the Action Tips menu, choose “Loop click each element.” This configuration allows Octoparse to automatically navigate through all available listings retrieved from your search.
Select Specific Data to Extract
Finally, choose the data fields you want to scrape, such as hotel name, price, address, rating, and image. After completing this step, run the task and let Octoparse automate the process to gather the specific data you need!
What is the Purpose of Using Proxies for Scraping Expedia?
No matter how you choose to scrape data from Expedia, it’s essential to use reliable proxy servers. Many contemporary websites employ protective measures that can prevent successful scraping when a single IP address makes an excessive number of requests within a brief timeframe. Expedia, like others, detects scraping activity promptly and automatically blocks all associated requests.
To circumvent this limitation and effectively gather all desired data, consider using a trustworthy rotating proxy. This service assigns a new IP address for each request, creating the impression that the requests originate from diverse users in various locations. This method prevents websites, like Expedia, from blocking your requests due to excessive activity from a single IP address.
How to Configure Proxies in Octoparse
Similar to other web scraping tools, Octoparse features proxy support. The software includes a pool of public IP addresses that users can access, though their reliability may vary. Here’s a guide on how to integrate your own proxies effectively for your scraping projects:
- Open Octoparse and click on the New icon in the top-left menu to create a new task.
- Paste the target URLs directly into the task or import them from another source, then click Save.
- Click on the Task Settings icon next to the URL and navigate to Anti-blocking Settings.
- Enable the Use IP proxies option and click on Settings directly beneath it.
- In the Proxy Settings pop-up window, adjust the interval for switching proxies as needed.
- Paste your list of proxies into the IP Proxies field and click Confirm to apply the settings.
Select the Best Proxy for Scraping Expedia
Swiftproxy
provides rotating residential proxies across 190+ global locations. Each IP address originates from a genuine device with a residential IP connection, making it indistinguishable from organic visitors. Our proxies are guaranteed 100% authentic, sourced ethically from our dedicated IP pool, ensuring reliable and effective scraping for any target!
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