viator-mcp

Search Viator tours, activities and experiences via MCP. Use when the user asks to find tours, activities, excursions, day trips, tickets, or "things to do" in a city or destination, get details/pricing/availability for a Viator product, list attractions in a destination, or convert supplier-currency prices. Triggers on phrases like "things to do in Rome", "find a food tour in Paris", "is this tour available in September", "Viator", "book an excursion" (search only — no booking), or "skip-the-line Colosseum tickets". Requires the @chrischall/viator-mcp package installed and the viator server registered (see Setup), plus a Viator Partner API key (free Basic Access affiliate tier).

MCP server for the Viator Partner API (v2, Basic Access affiliate tier) — search the Viator catalog of 300k+ tours, activities and experiences, get product details, availability schedules and pricing, browse attractions and destinations, all over stdio. Read-only: this tier cannot make bookings; every product result carries a productUrl for booking on viator.com.

• npm: npmjs.com/package/@chrischall/viator-mcp
• Source: github.com/chrischall/viator-mcp

Setup

Option A — npx (recommended)

Add to .mcp.json in your project or ~/.claude/mcp.json:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "viator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@chrischall/viator-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "VIATOR_API_KEY": "your-viator-partner-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Get a key by signing up as a Viator affiliate at partnerresources.viator.com — the Basic Access tier is free.

Option B — from source

bash

git clone https://github.com/chrischall/viator-mcp
cd viator-mcp
npm install && npm run build

Then point .mcp.json at dist/index.js with VIATOR_API_KEY in env.

Workflow

1. Find the destination id — vt_search_freetext with search_types: ["DESTINATIONS"] (or vt_list_destinations for the full taxonomy).
2. Search products — vt_search_products with the destination id plus filters (price, dates, rating, duration, tags via vt_list_product_tags, flags like FREE_CANCELLATION). Results are already slim while browsing — see Response shape.
3. Drill in — vt_get_product for full details; vt_get_availability_schedule for seasons/start times/pricing (supplier currency — convert with vt_get_exchange_rates).
4. Attractions — vt_search_attractions / vt_get_attraction for landmark-centric browsing; each attraction lists its mapped product codes.

Tools

Area	Tools
Products	vt_search_products, vt_get_product, vt_list_product_tags
Search	vt_search_freetext
Attractions	vt_search_attractions, vt_get_attraction
Availability	vt_get_availability_schedule
Reference	vt_list_destinations, vt_get_locations, vt_get_exchange_rates
Health	vt_healthcheck — is this connector working? Reports whether VIATOR_API_KEY resolved, whether Viator accepted it, and what to fix. Start here when another tool fails: an empty result can mean "no products" or "never authenticated".

Response shape

Every read tool — all ten of them — takes view: "compact" | "full", and compact is the default, so the smaller payload is what you get without asking for it. Pass view: "full" for Viator's untouched record.

What compact does differs by tool, because only two of them have a field projection written against Viator's documented shapes:

• vt_search_products and vt_search_freetext project each ProductSummary down to its product code, title, from-price and currency, rating, review count, duration, confirmation type, flags, booking URL and cover image — and nothing else. (vt_search_freetext projects only its PRODUCTS block; its attraction and destination results are media-stripped instead.) If Viator's shape drifts, the projection falls back to the raw response rather than emitting an empty one.
• The other eight — vt_get_product, vt_list_product_tags, vt_search_attractions, vt_get_attraction, vt_get_availability_schedule, vt_list_destinations, vt_get_locations and vt_get_exchange_rates — strip image and avatar URLs and do nothing else. Every other field comes back as Viator sent it.

vt_healthcheck takes no view: it reports a verdict it assembles itself, not a Viator payload, and a rung that cannot change anything is worse than no parameter.

(This replaced an opt-in compact: true flag. Passing compact now does nothing — zod drops the unknown key and you get the compact rung regardless, which is what the flag used to ask for.)

Notes

• Prices from vt_search_products/vt_search_freetext are in the requested currency; prices from vt_get_availability_schedule are in the supplier's currency.
• Viator rate-limits per endpoint on a rolling 10s window; the server caches identical reads (VIATOR_CACHE_TTL, default 60s) and retries once honoring Retry-After.
• Booking URLs (productUrl, attractionUrl) must be used verbatim for affiliate attribution; pass campaign_value to tag them.