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How to Scrape Expedia Data with Python?

Expedia is the go-to website for travelers! Users can easily find comprehensive and accurate travel information on it: from airfare prices to vacation rentals and car rentals. In addition to information retrieval, Expedia also allows users to book flights, accommodations, and rentals directly on its website, making it a valuable resource for travel-related data

However, Expedia does not provide a scraping API, which makes it difficult to directly scrape a large amount of flight information. Due to the large number of pages, it is not practical to collect this data manually.

Let's learn more about how to easily scrape accurate flight information on Expedia in this article.

Start reading now!

Expedia

Why is Expedia's data so important?

By crawling Expedia's data, you can obtain rich market information to help companies make smarter decisions in the travel industry. Whether it is optimizing operational strategies or providing customers with more cost-effective options, these data can play an important role.

  • Market analysis: Analyze market trends and competitive pricing to help travel agencies develop more competitive strategies.
  • Price comparison: Compare prices on different platforms in real time to ensure the best choice for customers.
  • Inventory monitoring: Track flight, hotel and car rental inventory, and adjust supply in time to meet demand.
  • Trend forecasting: Predict travel trends based on historical data and plan resources in advance.

Why is scraping data from Expedia difficult?

Like most modern websites, Expedia is a dynamic website that uses a lot of JavaScript to render content and handle user interactions. Therefore, it is difficult to scrape using traditional HTML-based web scraping tools such as Beautiful Soup and Cheerio because they cannot execute JavaScript.

2 Methods to Scrape Expedia data using Python

Method 1. Scrapeless Scraping API (Best choice)

Scrapeless is a powerful and efficient all-in-one toolkit for extracting data from Expedia and other travel-related websites. It offers a seamless way to gather valuable information without the technical challenges of building your own scraper.

Scrapeless provide an affordable, stable, and secure Expedia scraping API service. It helps you get flight and hotel details within 3 seconds. You only need to simply configure the parameters and input your API token.

  • Comprehensive data extraction: Scrapeless can scrape travel data including flights, hotel prices, car rentals, and more, ensuring you get all the information you need.
  • Customizable solutions: Tailor-made scraping solutions are available to meet your specific business needs, whether it is for market analysis, competitive pricing, or inventory monitoring.
  • Handling dynamic content: Advanced techniques for managing JavaScript-intensive websites ensure complete and accurate data extraction.
  • Scalable and reliable: Able to handle large-scale data scraping to deliver projects reliably and efficiently, providing you with timely and consistent data.
  • Data transfer: You can transfer Scrapeless code directly into your database, ensuring seamless integration with your existing systems. Scrapeless supports JSON format returns and exports.
  • Compliance and ethics: Scrapeless ensures compliance with legal and ethical guidelines, respecting website terms of service and data privacy regulations.

Method 2. Build your own Expedia Python scraper

Drawbacks:

  • Building your own Google Maps scraping tool is time-consuming.
  • You may face challenges such as IP blocking, CAPTCHA verificatioin, setting up multiple proxies, and managing request limits.

Scrape Expedia Data using Scrapeless with Python

Next, we will explain in detail how to combine Python and Scrapeless API to crawl Expedia flight data.

When developing without Scrapeless API, crawling the Expedia site may require consideration of request speed, proxy, risk control, data submission and other issues, but now using Scrapeless API, you only need to configure and edit the configuration of the data you need, and then run the program, you can get the data you need.

Note: The relevant code and configuration will be shown later

Step 1. Get Your API Key

To get started, you'll need to obtain your API Key from the Scrapeless Dashboard:

  • Log in to the Scrapeless Dashboard.
  • Navigate to API Key Management.
  • Click Create to generate your unique API Key.
  • Once created, simply click on the API Key to copy it.

Once you complete your registration with Scrapeless, you will receive a $2 free search balance.

API Key Management

Step 2. Write the Scrapeless API request code

The following is the reference request code I wrote. You can adjust the specific values as needed:

payload = {
        "actor": "scraper.expedia", # Service to be called
        "input": {
            "origin": "Tokyo (and vicinity), Tokyo Prefecture, Japan", # Departure address
            "destination": "New York, NY, United States of America (NYC-All Airports)", # Destination
            "date": {"year": 2025, "month": 3, "day": 5}, # Departure date
            "cabin_class": "PREMIUM_ECONOMY", # Cabin class
            "travelers": {
                "adult": 1, # Number of adults
                "children": [], # Age of children 2-17
                "infants_on_lap": [], # Age of infants 0-1
                "infants_in_seat": [], # Age of infants 0-1
            },
            "size": 20, # Number of data returned per query, maximum 20
            "page": 0, # Number of pages queried
        },
    }
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Step 3. Integrate into the Scrapeless API

Remember the API key we just created? We need to officially access the Scrapeless API service after the request is written. Please fill in your API token in the code below:

url = "https://api.scrapeless.com/api/v1/scraper/request"
headers = {"x-api-token": api-key} # Input your API-key
res = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
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The whole coding:

import time
import requests

api_key = "..."

headers = {"x-api-token": api_key}

payload = {
    "actor": "scraper.expedia",
    "input": {
        "page": 0,
        "origin": "Tokyo (and vicinity), Tokyo Prefecture, Japan",
        "destination": "New York, NY, United States of America (NYC-All Airports)",
        "date": {"year": 2025, "month": 4, "day": 22},
        "cabin_class": "PREMIUM_ECONOMY",
        "travelers": {
            "adult": 1,
            "children": [],
            "infants_on_lap": [],
            "infants_in_seat": [],
        },
        "size": 20,
        "page": 0,
    },
}

url = "https://api.scrapeless.com/api/v1/scraper/request"
res = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
print(data.text)
data = res.json()

# If the timeout occurs, we return the task id
if "taskId" in data:
    for i in range(10):
        time.sleep(1)
        url = "https://api.scrapeless.com/api/v1/getTaskResult/" + data["taskId"]
        resp = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
        if resp.status_code != 200:
            print("failed:", resp.text)
            break
        if "data" in resp.json():
            print("succeed:", resp.text)
            break
        print(resp.text)
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Scraping results reference

Scraping results

Further Reading:

Scrape Expedia Data via APIDocs

You can also scrape Expedia flight data directly in the Scrapeless API documentation. Please refer to the following steps.

  • Step 1. Create your API token (mentioned earlier).
  • Step 2. Go to the Expedia page and click "Try it out".
  • Step 3. Configure the parameters you need in the Params section. You can view the overall code content in the Body.

Scrape Expedia Data via APIDocs

Here is the request code for reference:

{
    "actor": "scraper.expedia",
    "input": {
        "origin": "Tokyo (and vicinity), Tokyo Prefecture, Japan",
        "destination": "New York, NY, United States of America (NYC-All Airports)",
        "date": {
            "year": 2025,
            "month": 3,
            "day": 5
        },
        "cabin_class": "PREMIUM_ECONOMY",
        "travelers": {
            "adult": 1,
            "children": [],
            "infants_on_lap": [],
            "infants_in_seat": []
        },
        "size": 20,
        "page": 0
    }
}
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  • Step 4. The most important thing is to click "Auth" and paste your API token. Finally, click "Send" to scrape the data!

scrape the data

  • Scraping result๏ผš
{
    "data": {
        "flightsSearch": {
            "flightsSheets": null,
            "clientMetadata": {
                "pageName": "TYO to NYC flights",
                "pageNameAnalytics": {
                    "__typename": "FlightsAnalytics",
                    "linkName": "Flight Search Page One Way",
                    "referrerId": "page.Flight-Search-Oneway"
                },
                "responseTags": [
                    "RESPONSE_SUMMARY_HYBRID",
                    "UNRECOGNIZED",
                    "UNRECOGNIZED",
                    "UNRECOGNIZED",
                    "RESPONSE_SUMMARY_REFINEMENTS_CACHE_LIVE"
                ],
                "responseMetrics": [
                    {
                        "name": "LISTINGS_SUPPLY_RESPONSE_TIME",
                        "value": "1450"
                    }
                ],
                "evaluatedExperiments": [
                    {
                        "bucket": 0,
                        "id": "FARES_ON_FSR_VARIANT"
                    },
                    {
                        "bucket": 1,
                        "id": "RECOMMENDED_SORT_V2_ENABLED"
                    },
                    {
                        "bucket": 0,
                        "id": "CACHE_HYDRATOR_FEATURE"
                    },
                    {
                        "bucket": 0,
                        "id": "TEST_SEARCH_STACK"
                    },
                    {
                        "bucket": 0,
                        "id": "NONSTOP_ENABLED"
                    },
                    {
                        "bucket": 1,
                        "id": "VERTICAL_SLICING_ENABLED"
                    },
                    {
                        "bucket": 0,
                        "id": "SHARED_UI_LISTINGS_ENABLED"
                    }
                ]
            },
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Ending Thoughts

Manually building a Python crawler can crawl Expedia data, but it is easy to encounter various website blocking obstacles. If you want to crawl Expedia flight data more safely, directly, quickly, and accurately, you can try Scrapeless Scraping API. Only simple parameter configuration and data filling are required to seamlessly complete the result crawling.

Get the Free Trial Now!

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