Match And Monitor Your Hotel Listings By Web Scraping Hotel Prices
In the dynamic world of the travel and hotel industry, a vast amount of data is constantly updated, often on an hourly basis. Managing hotel listings across multiple platforms can be a daunting task, but technology has made it easier than ever before.
Access to accurate and structured data in a timely manner is crucial for businesses operating in the ever-changing Travel industry. Web scraping can provide daily price data for hotels, streamlining and optimizing the price-matching process.
Below is one such use case where PromptCloud supported a hotel chain’s requirement.
Client Details
A prominent budget hotel chain in India needed to update their hotel prices twice a day and required daily pricing data for themselves and their competitors. They sought the assistance of a web scraping service provider, PromptCloud, to efficiently gather this information and harvest the data they required.
Hotel Data Requirements
The client had a clear set of requirements that needed to be met:
- The check-in and check-out dates were to be specified by the client.
- The data was to be uploaded to a file-sharing server, and our crawlers were to retrieve it at specific times for processing.
- The fields for data extraction were predetermined and had to be in a specific order as instructed by the client.
- The web crawl frequency was twice a day.
- The crawled data for a particular day had to be completed and delivered by 23:59 hrs on the same day.
- Hotel prices were to be retrieved in INR only.
- Inventory crawls for hotel details was to be carried out twice a month for updating purposes.
The purpose of collecting this data was to identify new hotels in the region and collaborate with them to expand the hotel’s network across the country in a strategic manner.
Target Sites and Approximate Monthly Data Volumes
PromptCloud provided the data from most of the major Online Travel Agents (OTAs) in India, with a volume of approximately 30 million records per month. Our robust platform delivered around 300,000 to 400,000 records per site per day, based on the files uploaded by the client.
Related Use Cases
Explore more use cases that demonstrate how PromptCloud’s web scraping tool can help businesses gain a competitive edge by providing access to valuable data insights that can inform pricing, marketing, and strategic decisions.
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Scrape Hotel Reviews From Travel Portals
Web Scraping Hotel Prices for Regular Data
- The crawlers were programmed to retrieve the files from the shared server at scheduled times during the day and would check for files once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
- To ensure timely data delivery, we developed additional scripts and utilized extra resources, enabling us to complete the task before 23:59 hours.
- The crawlers were also programmed to detect the currency of the hotel prices and convert it to INR if needed. This was crucial as we utilized servers from across the world to crawl the data.
Since the data was being crawled from servers around the world, we programmed the crawlers to avoid overloading the target servers and potentially getting blocked, while still capturing all necessary data before the deadline.
Benefits Received from Scraping Hotel Prices
- Our web scraping service provided regular and flexible access to the necessary data as needed. The web crawler picks up data only if it’s available, hence the client could upload files only when required.
- The formation of a dedicated team at the client’s side who were directly involved in this activity resulted in a 23% cost savings for the client.
- Considering a dedicated team at the client side who were directly involved with this activity, a cost savings of about 23% was achieved by them
- With bi-monthly inventory crawls, the client had regular access to updated data (every fortnight) and was able to expand their presence across the country.
- The low turnaround time of the automated process allowed for more effective use of the extracted data.
Except for the initial onboarding period, the process was completely automated. In case of any disruptions in service, the support team was automatically updated to ensure a smooth operation of the crawls.
Result: Efficient Hotel Price Matching and Monitoring
Although the initial setup presented challenges, once implemented, the client effectively utilized the extracted data to enhance their pricing and promotion strategies.
