Hotelrate Crawl

hotelrate-mcp

Real-time hotel price comparison across 4 OTA platforms — powered by MCP

Ask any AI agent: "Compare prices for Park Hyatt Tokyo" — it queries Trip.com, Booking.com, Agoda & Google Hotels in parallel and returns normalized results.

[](https://github.com/seanbabalala/hotelrate-crawl/actions/workflows/ci.yml) [](https://www.python.org/) [](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/) [](LICENSE)

[Quick Start](#quick-start) · [MCP Tools](#mcp-tools) · [Live Mode](#live-mode-setup) · [Architecture](#architecture) · [Contributing](CONTRIBUTING.md)

---

Why hotelrate-mcp?

Hotels show different prices on different OTA platforms — sometimes with 20-40% variance for the exact same room. This project lets AI agents (or scripts) compare prices in real-time:

| | Trip.com | Booking.com | Agoda | Google Hotels | |---|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:| | Real-time crawling | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Session persistence | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | | Member-only pricing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — |

Two modes:

• Demo mode — instant synthetic data, zero setup, no browser needed
• Live mode — real Playwright crawls against actual OTA websites

---

Quick Start

1. Install

git clone https://github.com/seanbabalala/hotelrate-crawl.git
cd hotelrate-crawl
pip install -e .

2. Configure

Interactive wizard (recommended)

hotelrate-mcp setup

Walks you through everything: dependency checks → .env creation → platform selection → browser login → session verification

Demo mode (instant, no browser)

cp .env.example .env

DEMO_MODE=true by default — returns synthetic data so you can test the full pipeline immediately

3. Run

hotelrate-mcp                # stdio (Claude Code / Claude Desktop)
hotelrate-mcp serve --transport sse --port 8080   # SSE (web clients)

4. Verify

hotelrate-mcp doctor

  Prerequisites
    ✓ Python ≥3.12 — Python 3.13.3
    ✓ Playwright package — installed
    ✓ Chromium browser — found

  Configuration
    ✓ .env file — exists
    ! Settings — DEMO_MODE=true (set to false for live crawls)

  Platform Profiles
    ✓ Trip.com profile — .playwright/trip-profile/ (16494 files)
    ✓ Booking.com profile — .playwright/booking-profile/ (53375 files)
    ✓ Agoda profile — .playwright/agoda-profile/ (13688 files)

  8 passed  •  0 error(s)  •  1 warning(s)

---

Connect to AI Agents

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hotelrate": {
      "command": "hotelrate-mcp",
      "env": { "DEMO_MODE": "true" }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add hotelrate -- hotelrate-mcp

Then ask naturally:

> "Compare prices for Park Hyatt Tokyo > on May 1st across all platforms"

---

MCP Tools

hotel_quote

Get real-time hotel prices from one or more OTA platforms.

hotel_name: "Park Hyatt Tokyo"    # required
checkin:    "2026-05-01"           # default: 7 days from now
checkout:   "2026-05-02"           # default: checkin + 1
city:       "Tokyo"                # helps URL discovery
adults:     2                      # 1-8
children:   0                      # 0-6
currency:   "USD"                  # ISO 4217
platforms:  ["trip", "booking"]    # default: all enabled
locale:     "en-US"                # BCP 47

hotel_quote_batch

Query multiple hotels in parallel.

hotels:
  - hotel_name: "Park Hyatt Tokyo"
    city: "Tokyo"
    checkin: "2026-05-01"
    checkout: "2026-05-02"
  - hotel_name: "The Peninsula Shanghai"
    city: "Shanghai"
concurrency: 3   # 1-10

list_platforms

List supported OTA platforms and their current status.

health_check

Check Playwright, Firecrawl, and platform readiness.

---

CLI Commands

hotelrate-mcp                 Start the MCP server (default)
hotelrate-mcp serve           Start the MCP server (explicit)
hotelrate-mcp setup           Interactive first-time setup wizard
hotelrate-mcp doctor          Environment health diagnostics

hotelrate-mcp setup — options

hotelrate-mcp setup                          # full interactive wizard
hotelrate-mcp setup --platforms trip booking  # specific platforms only
hotelrate-mcp setup --skip-login             # skip browser login (CI)
hotelrate-mcp setup --timeout 600            # adjust login wait time

7 steps: Python check → Playwright install → .env creation → platform selection → browser login → session probe → summary. Ctrl+C safe at any point.

hotelrate-mcp doctor — options

hotelrate-mcp doctor          # quick check
hotelrate-mcp doctor --probe  # also verify live sessions via headless browser
hotelrate-mcp doctor --json   # machine-readable JSON (for CI / scripting)

Exit code: 0 = healthy, 1 = errors found.

Transports

| Transport | Command | Use Case | |-----------|---------|----------| | stdio | hotelrate-mcp | Claude Code, Claude Desktop | | SSE | hotelrate-mcp serve --transport sse | Web clients, remote access | | Streamable HTTP | hotelrate-mcp serve --transport streamable-http | HTTP-based MCP clients |

Backward compat: hotelrate-mcp --transport sse (without serve) still works.

---

Live Mode Setup

Demo mode works out of the box. For real OTA prices, you need to log in to each platform once so browser session cookies are saved.

Recommended:

hotelrate-mcp setup

Manual setup (alternative)

1. Edit .env:

``dotenv DEMO_MODE=false PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSER_CHANNEL=chrome ``

1. Install browser: playwright install chrome

1. Log in to each platform:

``bash python scripts/platform_login_warmup.py --platform trip python scripts/platform_login_warmup.py --platform booking ``

1. Close browser after login — session cookies are saved to .playwright/ profiles.

1. Verify: hotelrate-mcp doctor --probe

See [docs/live-mode-login.md](docs/live-mode-login.md) for the full walkthrough.

---

Configuration

All via environment variables or .env file:

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | DEMO_MODE | true | true = synthetic data, false = live Playwright crawls | | HEADLESS | true | Show / hide browser windows | | GOOGLE_SKIP | true | Skip Google Hotels (slower, often blocked) | | FIRECRAWL_ENABLED | true | Enable Firecrawl for URL discovery | | DEFAULT_CHECKIN_OFFSET_DAYS | 7 | Default check-in offset from today | | DEFAULT_LENGTH_OF_STAY | 1 | Default number of nights |

> See [.env.example](.env.example) for the complete list (~30 variables).

---

Scripting & REST API

CLI script

python scripts/live_meta_quote.py \
  --hotel "Park Hyatt Tokyo" --city "Tokyo" \
  --checkin 2026-05-01 --checkout 2026-05-02 \
  --currency USD --out reports/quote.json

REST API (optional FastAPI server)

pip install -e ".[api]"
uvicorn hotelrate.apps.api.main:app --reload

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/meta/quote \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"hotel_name":"Park Hyatt Tokyo","city":"Tokyo","checkin":"2026-05-01","checkout":"2026-05-02"}'

---

Architecture

src/hotelrate/
├── apps/
│   ├── mcp/               MCP Server (main interface)
│   │   ├── server.py      FastMCP server + CLI routing
│   │   ├── tools.py       4 MCP tool definitions
│   │   └── cli/           setup & doctor subcommands
│   ├── api/               FastAPI REST endpoints (optional)
│   └── worker/            APScheduler periodic crawler (optional)
├── collectors/
│   ├── trip/              Trip.com adapter
│   ├── booking/           Booking.com adapter
│   ├── agoda/             Agoda adapter
│   └── google_hotels/     Google Hotels adapter
├── services/
│   └── live_quote_service.py   Core orchestration
├── schemas/               Pydantic models
├── core/                  Normalizer, matcher, locale helpers
├── infra/                 Database layer (SQLAlchemy, optional)
└── config.py              Settings (pydantic-settings)

---

Development

python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[all,dev]"

pytest tests/ -v          # 112 tests
ruff check src/ tests/    # lint
hotelrate-mcp doctor      # environment health

See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for the full guide, including how to add a new OTA platform.

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Do not commit .env, .playwright/, or reports/*_debug_* files. Browser login state is local-only — not portable across machines.

Report security issues via [SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md).

[MIT License](LICENSE)

Source & license

This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: seanbabalala
• Source: seanbabalala/hotelrate-crawl
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://github.com/seanbabalala/hotelrate-crawl

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.