Tripadvisor MCP server

The Tripadvisor MCP Server provides access to Tripadvisor location data, reviews, and photos through standardized Model Context Protocol interfaces, allowing AI assistants to search for travel destinations and experiences with ease.

Features

• Search for locations (hotels, restaurants, attractions) on Tripadvisor
• Get detailed information about specific locations
• Retrieve reviews and photos for locations
• Search for nearby locations based on coordinates
• API Key authentication
• Docker containerization support
• Interactive tools for AI assistants

Installation and Setup

Prerequisites

You'll need a Tripadvisor Content API key from the Tripadvisor Developer Portal.

Basic Setup

1. Configure the environment variables for your Tripadvisor Content API, either through a .env file or system environment variables:

# Required: Tripadvisor Content API configuration
TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

2. Add the server configuration to your client configuration file. For example, for Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tripadvisor": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<full path to tripadvisor-mcp directory>",
        "run",
        "src/tripadvisor_mcp/main.py"
      ],
      "env": {
        "TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Note: if you see Error: spawn uv ENOENT in Claude Desktop, you may need to specify the full path to uv or set the environment variable NO_UV=1 in the configuration.

Docker Installation

Building the Docker Image

Build the Docker image using:

docker build -t tripadvisor-mcp-server .

Running with Docker

You can run the server using Docker in several ways:

Using docker run directly:

docker run -it --rm \
  -e TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY=your_api_key_here \
  tripadvisor-mcp-server

Using docker-compose:

Create a .env file with your Tripadvisor API key and then run:

docker-compose up

Running with Docker in Claude Desktop

To use the containerized server with Claude Desktop, update the configuration to use Docker with the environment variables:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tripadvisor": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--rm",
        "-i",
        "-e", "TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY",
        "tripadvisor-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

This configuration passes the environment variables from Claude Desktop to the Docker container using the -e flag.

Available Tools

The MCP server provides several tools for interacting with Tripadvisor data:

Search Tools

• search_locations: Search for locations by query text, category, and other filters
• search_nearby_locations: Find locations near specific coordinates

Retrieval Tools

• get_location_details: Get detailed information about a location
• get_location_reviews: Retrieve reviews for a location
• get_location_photos: Get photos for a location

The list of tools is configurable, allowing you to choose which tools to make available to the MCP client.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "tripadvisor" '{"command":"uv","args":["--directory","<full path to tripadvisor-mcp directory>","run","src/tripadvisor_mcp/main.py"],"env":{"TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY":"your_api_key_here"}}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "tripadvisor": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "<full path to tripadvisor-mcp directory>",
                "run",
                "src/tripadvisor_mcp/main.py"
            ],
            "env": {
                "TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
            }
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "tripadvisor": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "<full path to tripadvisor-mcp directory>",
                "run",
                "src/tripadvisor_mcp/main.py"
            ],
            "env": {
                "TRIPADVISOR_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
            }
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect