# Changelog of Booking Reviews Scraper — Hotels & Monitor (`zenomastro/booking-reviews-reliable`) Actor

- **URL**: https://apify.com/zenomastro/booking-reviews-reliable/changelog.md
- **Full Actor documentation**: https://apify.com/zenomastro/booking-reviews-reliable.md

## Changelog

### 2026-10-14

- Richer free review insights per hotel (`review_insights` row): traveler-type and language distributions, top reviewer countries, average nights and the share of reviews with photos.
- New review fields: `languageBase` (e.g. `en` for `en-gb`) and `photoCount`. Existing fields are unchanged.
- New input `startUrls`: hotel URLs with your own `userData`, returned as `customData` on every row of that hotel (e.g. a CRM ID).
- New option `includeReviewerInfo`: turn it off to collect reviews without guests' names (data minimisation); scores, texts, country, traveler type, stay details and hotel replies stay.
- Payloads written for other Booking.com review scrapers work as they are: `sortReviewsBy`, `maxReviewsPerProperty`, `maxReviews` and `cutoffDate` are accepted.
- Reliability: the run stops shortly before its timeout instead of timing out, delivers everything collected and says how far it got (`status` row with `stopReason`, `hotelsProcessed`, `hotelsTotal`); a platform migration or a resurrected run continues where it stopped without delivering or charging any review twice; progress and the review monitor state are saved during the run, not only at its end. A run that delivered nothing ends as FAILED when an unexpected error stops it.
- Faster delivery: reviews are written and charged in batches of 50 instead of one by one.
- New "Review details" and "Hotels" tables in the Output tab.

### 2026-10-07

- Reviews from a specific period: with a reviewed date range (`reviewedAfter` / `reviewedBefore`) and newest or oldest order, the Actor now jumps straight to that period in Booking.com's review list instead of reading every newer (or older) review first, so a month several years back takes a few requests. Inside the period it may read up to `maxPagesPerHotel` pages and stops at its end. The hotel summary row shows where the period started (`dateRangeStartPage`).
- Clearer status rows: when a hotel has no reviews in the requested period the row says so, and a date range used with an order that is not by date suggests newest or oldest.
- A Booking.com review page that fails once is requested again before the hotel is retried from the start, so a passing hiccup costs a second instead of the whole hotel.

### 2026-10-03

- Lower run start fee: $0.0001 per GB of run memory (was higher), so short runs and AI-agent calls cost less.
- Clearer title and description, and README cleaned up (no duplicated sections).
- Input form: the essential fields come first; optional settings are grouped under "Advanced settings".

### 2026-10-02

- New sort orders: oldest first, highest score first and lowest score first (Booking.com's own sorting), next to newest and most relevant. The hotel summary row shows the order requested and applied.
- Date filters accept relative values such as "7 days", "2 weeks" or "3 months", counted back from the run start, so scheduled runs can always ask for "the last week".
- Monitoring fix: only reviews actually delivered to your dataset are remembered as seen. If a run stops at your maximum charge limit, the undelivered reviews come in the next run instead of being skipped, and the monitor state is always saved.
- API runs that pass only hotel searches or discovery URLs no longer also scrape (and bill) the example hotel; it is now only a prefill in the input form.
- Input problems (no hotel given, invalid date, unknown sort order, onlyNew without a monitor name) no longer fail the run: it finishes with one free error row that explains what to change.
- A free status row now explains when selective filters returned fewer reviews than requested, with the pages scanned and how to search deeper.
- The browser timeout setting now also extends the wait for Booking.com's review session on slow pages.
- Hotel names no longer include Booking.com's "(updated prices ...)" title suffix.
- README: corrected the pricing note (Apify platform usage is included in the price) and the traveler-type codes.

### 2026-10-01

- Fixed: reviews load reliably again. Booking.com now serves its review API as a persisted query in many sessions; both variants are supported, and the reviews panel opens directly.
- Direct access first, then the Apify datacenter proxy; an optional residential proxy fallback is available as a paid add-on ($0.10 per attempt).
- Summary-only mode is charged per hotel summary; summary rows next to reviews stay free.
- New Store icon.
- The monitor input is now called monitorName (monitorKey still works for existing tasks and schedules).
- Subscriber discounts on paid Apify plans: Bronze −10%, Silver −15%, Gold and higher −20% per result.
- Simpler pricing: Apify platform usage is now included in the per-result price, so you only pay per result plus a small start fee.
- Prefilled example input, so the first run works with one click.
- New Output tab with a results table and a JSON link for APIs and AI agents.
- README section on using the Actor from AI agents (Apify MCP server) and the REST API.
- Safer memory limits to keep runs fast and costs predictable.
- Residential and SERP proxy groups are replaced by the included datacenter proxy (your own proxy URLs still work), so the price stays all-inclusive.
- At the end of a run, the status message now links to the reviews and issues pages, so you can rate the Actor (1–5 ★) or suggest improvements.