Tripadvisor Reviews API - Hotels, Restaurants, Attractions

Tripadvisor via Scavio

Resolve a place or business name to Tripadvisor's own ids, list ranked restaurants, hotels and attractions in a geo, read one location in full, and page through its reviews. All endpoints return structured JSON.

When to trigger

Use this skill when the user asks to:

• Find the top-rated restaurants, hotels or attractions in a city or area
• Look up one venue's Tripadvisor rating, ranking, price band, cuisines, amenities, hours and contact details
• Read Tripadvisor review bodies with trip dates, trip types and management responses
• Compare a venue against its local competitive set
• Monitor a venue's reputation and review flow
• Turn a place NAME into the ids Tripadvisor's own URLs use

Setup

Get a free API key at scavio.dev (50 free credits to get started, no card required):

export SCAVIO_API_KEY=sk_live_your_key

Every request is a POST with a JSON body and:

Authorization: Bearer $SCAVIO_API_KEY

Endpoints

Base URL: https://api.scavio.dev. Every Tripadvisor endpoint costs 2 credits.

Workflow

Start at /locations. Every other endpoint is keyed by ids that exist only inside Tripadvisor's own URLs, so a caller holding a place name has no other entry point.

1. Resolve the name: call /tripadvisor/locations with query. Each result carries type, geo_id and location_id.
   • A GEO row (a city or region) answers geo_id for /search. Its location_id is null.
   • A business row answers the geo_id + location_id pair that /location and /reviews take.
2. List a geo: call /tripadvisor/search with geo_id and a category (restaurants, hotels, attractions). Or paste a full Tripadvisor listing URL as url instead.
3. One venue: call /tripadvisor/location with location_id (+ geo_id) or a full _Review URL. Page 1 of the reviews already rides along here.
4. More reviews: call /tripadvisor/reviews only to page past the first page.

Pagination

• /search renders 30 locations per page. A page beyond the last is a 404, not an empty result.
• /reviews page size depends on the family - 15 for restaurants, 10 for hotels and attractions - so category must match the location's own type on any page past the first, or you will page in the wrong stride.
• Consecutive review pages can repeat one review at the boundary. De-duplicate on review_id when concatenating.
• /locations and /location do not page. On /locations, limit only sizes the single response (1-20, default 12); it is not a page parameter.

Parameters

Locations lookup (/locations)

Search (/search)

geo_id or url is required.

Location (/location)

location_id or url is required; a bare d-id additionally needs a geo.

Reviews (/reviews)

Examples

import requests

BASE = "https://api.scavio.dev"
# Your key from https://scavio.dev. Load it from your environment or secret
# store in real code - keep it out of source control.
API_KEY = "sk_your_key_here"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}

# 1. ALWAYS START HERE - a name is not an id
places = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/tripadvisor/locations", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"query": "Austin, Texas"}).json()

geo = next(r for r in places["data"]["results"] if r["type"] == "GEO")

# 2. Ranked restaurants in that geo
listing = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/tripadvisor/search", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"geo_id": geo["geo_id"], "category": "restaurants"}).json()

row = listing["data"]["results"][0]

# 3. One venue in full - page 1 of its reviews comes along for free
venue = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/tripadvisor/location", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"location_id": row["location_id"], "geo_id": row["geo_id"],
          "category": "restaurants"}).json()

# 4. Page PAST that first page - keep category in step with the venue type
more = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/tripadvisor/reviews", headers=HEADERS,
    json={"location_id": row["location_id"], "geo_id": row["geo_id"],
          "category": "restaurants", "page": 2}).json()

Concatenating review pages, de-duplicated on review_id:

def review_pages(location_id, geo_id, category="restaurants", pages=(2, 3, 4)):
    """2 credits per page. Page 1 already came with /location."""
    seen, out = set(), []
    for page in pages:
        data = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/tripadvisor/reviews", headers=HEADERS,
                             json={"location_id": location_id, "geo_id": geo_id,
                                   "category": category, "page": page}).json()["data"]
        for r in data["reviews"]:
            if r["review_id"] not in seen:      # pages overlap at the boundary
                seen.add(r["review_id"])
                out.append(r)
    return out

Response shapes

Every response uses the envelope { data, response_time, credits_used, credits_remaining }. Key data fields:

• locations — query, count, results[] (pos, type (GEO or a business type), name, geo_id, location_id (null on a GEO row), url, latitude, longitude, category).
• search — geo_id, category, location, url, page, count, breadcrumbs, results[] (pos, location_id, geo_id, type, name, rank, url, image, rating, review_count, price_range, price, cuisines, street_address, city, region, postal_code, country, address, latitude, longitude, phone, hours, menu_url, accepts_reservations, description, ranking, review_snippet, travelers_choice, sponsored).
• location — location_id, geo_id, type, url, name, description, rating, review_count, rating_distribution, subratings, ranking, ranking_position, ranking_total, ranking_category, price_range, cuisines, meal_types, special_diets, street_address, city, region, postal_code, country, address, latitude, longitude, phone, website, menu_url, hours, hours_text, open_now, amenities, features, image, images, photo_count, travelers_choice, breadcrumbs, reviews[] (page 1).
• reviews — location_id, geo_id, type, url, name, rating, review_count, rating_distribution, offset, count, reviews[] (pos, review_id, url, title, text, rating, published_date, trip_date, trip_type, author, author_url, author_location, author_contributions, helpful_votes, owner_response, owner_response_date, owner_response_from).

{
  "data": {
    "query": "Austin, Texas",
    "count": 10,
    "results": [
      {
        "pos": 1,
        "type": "GEO",
        "name": "Austin, Texas, United States",
        "geo_id": "30196",
        "location_id": null,
        "url": "https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g30196-Austin_Texas-Vacations.html",
        "latitude": 30.267223,
        "longitude": -97.742546,
        "category": "Destinations"
      }
    ]
  },
  "credits_used": 2,
  "credits_remaining": 998
}

Guardrails

• Every call is 2 credits, including one that comes back empty. A name-to-reviews walk is four calls and 8 credits before any paging - say so before starting.
• Never guess a geo_id or location_id. Resolve the name with /locations first; ids only exist inside Tripadvisor's URLs.
• Do not call /reviews with page: 1 after /location - you already have that page, and the repeat costs another 2 credits.
• Keep category matched to the venue's own type when paging reviews. A restaurant pages in 15s and a hotel in 10s; a mismatch silently skips or repeats reviews.
• De-duplicate on review_id when you concatenate pages - the boundary review can repeat.
• Do not ask for a page beyond the last; it is a billed 404, not an empty list.
• A rating and a city ranking are Tripadvisor's, computed from reviews Tripadvisor chose to display. Attribute them.
• Never fabricate venue names, ratings, rankings or review text. Only return what the API returned.

Failure handling

• 400 means an invalid or missing parameter - neither geo_id nor url on search, neither location_id nor url on location/reviews, a bare d-id with no geo, or a category outside the enum. Fix and retry.
• 401 means the API key is invalid or missing. Check SCAVIO_API_KEY.
• 404 means the id does not exist or the page is past the last one. Tripadvisor answers an unknown location id with a billed 200 city listing that the API restates as a 404 - re-resolve the name with /locations rather than retrying the id.
• 429 means rate or usage limit exceeded. Wait before retrying. See rate limits.
• 502 / 503 mean upstream is temporarily unavailable - wait a few seconds and retry, up to a few times.
• If /locations returns nothing useful, try the fuller place name ("Austin, Texas" rather than "Austin").
• If SCAVIO_API_KEY is not set, prompt the user to export it before continuing.

SDKs

pip install scavio==0.15.0

from scavio import ScavioClient

client = ScavioClient()  # reads SCAVIO_API_KEY

places = client.tripadvisor.locations("Austin, Texas")
geo = next(r for r in places["data"]["results"] if r["type"] == "GEO")

listing = client.tripadvisor.search(geo_id=geo["geo_id"], category="restaurants")
row = listing["data"]["results"][0]

venue = client.tripadvisor.location(location_id=row["location_id"], geo_id=row["geo_id"])
more = client.tripadvisor.reviews(location_id=row["location_id"], geo_id=row["geo_id"], page=2)

npm install scavio@0.15.0

import { Scavio } from "scavio";

const client = new Scavio(); // reads SCAVIO_API_KEY
const places = await client.tripadvisor.locations({ query: "Austin, Texas" });
const listing = await client.tripadvisor.search({ geo_id: "30196", category: "restaurants" });