The number of hotels, flight companies, travel agencies, and booking engine websites is increasing. While this is great news for travel fare aggregation because there is more data to give to the clients, it’s also challenging. Travel fare aggregation sites are becoming more and more dependent on proxies, such as a Canadian proxy.
In this article, we will take a closer look at travel fare aggregation, how proxies can help, and which types of proxies you can use if you decide to start a travel fare aggregation site.
The role of travel fare aggregation
The role of travel fare aggregation is to enable users to identify the best prices on the market easily. How does travel fare aggregation do that? The process is quite simple to understand. Hotels, flight companies, travel agencies, and booking engine websites host data regarding available rooms, flights, prices, and occupancy.
Travel fare aggregators go to these websites, find relevant data, and collect it. Once the data is gathered, it is presented in a convenient way on a travel fare aggregator website.
However, we are talking about tens of thousands of websites, each one with a unique structure, database, and dynamic web pages. Some of these websites use protection against data scraping, and some may be inaccessible to travel fare aggregators due to geo-restrictions. This is where proxies come in.
Proxies and how they help
Proxies act as a gateway between a server or computer and the rest of the web. They can assign different IP addresses for every request, manipulate user agents, and help bypass geo-restrictions. How can this be of help for travel fare aggregators?
Travel fare aggregators need to ensure an uninterrupted data gathering process. However, JavaScrip makes it really hard for proxies and scraping bots to access data within JavaScript elements. There is also the risk of IP addresses being blocked.
Proxies easily resolve this using real residential IPs. For instance, a Canadian proxy can seamlessly help gather data from all Canadian travel websites. Residential proxies are also very hard to detect as they use IP addresses that have a physical location globally, making it less likely that travel aggregators get blocked by websites.
Hotels, flight companies, travel agencies, and booking engines constantly change the prices on their websites. This is a huge challenge for travel fare aggregators. They don’t only have to run a large-scale data gathering operation but also run it non-stop. They need to update prices in real-time. Cutting edge proxies support these large-scale operations allowing travel fare aggregators to scale up and down their operations when needed.
There is one more challenge to take into account. Travel agencies, hotels, and flight companies offer different prices to people coming from different geo-locations. To provide accurate information, travel fare aggregators need to access data from a specific geo-location.
Proxies have a large pool of IP addresses pointing to different locations. Thanks to proxies, travel fare aggregators can gather information from virtually any location. For instance, a Canadian proxy can help travel aggregators get access to prices and special offers only Canadian travelers have access to. Some proxies can even unlock very specific targeting and help travel fare aggregators discover offers at a city level.
Types of proxies that you can use
While there are a dozen proxy types, for travel fare aggregation, you want to use residential proxies. Why? Because gathering data from other websites is called data scraping and the best proxies for data scraping are residential proxies.
Residential proxies are the most reliable for this operation out of all the proxy types. They offer IP addresses that come from Internet Service Providers. It means that every IP address in their pool is a real IP address that points to a physical address in the real world. A residential proxy can help you effortlessly build a travel fare aggregator, pull data from different geo locations, bypass geo-restrictions, and avoid getting banned.
Rotating proxy is also a viable option but far less reliable than a residential proxy. Why? Because it uses generic IP addresses that travel websites can easily pick up as suspicious.
The costs and skills required
When it comes to skills required, proxies for travel fare aggregators are automated solutions, and they don’t require an extensive technical background. You can integrate them into your workflow effortlessly and build a travel fare aggregator website hassle-free.
Proxies offer different pricing plans. The price depends on several factors, including IP pool size, allocated bandwidth, allowed concurrency, and available locations. Some proxies are available under $100, while others can cost up to several hundreds of US dollars.
Conclusion
Travel fare aggregators face many new challenges – dynamic web pages, anti-scraping measures, and geo-specific prices and offers. Fortunately, proxies such as a Canadian proxy can help travel fare aggregators streamline their operation, gather accurate data as real users see it, and prevent IP bans.