Supported Locales for Factual Content

Tripadvisor supports over 28 points of sale across the globe and localizes the user experience for travelers visiting our sites. For example, a user in Mexico will see slightly different, localized Spanish than a user visiting our Argentina site. The same goes for someone in the UK and in the US viewing content in English.

To take advantage of Tripadvisor's unique localization across our content, please refer to this guide to retrieve the desired locale in your integration.

Overview

The locale query parameter controls which language and regional variant is returned for factual content: names, descriptions, addresses, GenAI text, and enum labels (categories, awards, subratings). It is available on all factual-content endpoints.

Locales are distinct from the language parameter used on the reviews endpoint. The key difference:

How to use the locale parameter

Pass locale as a query parameter on any factual endpoint:

GET /locations/{id}?locale=es-MX

Multiple locales: Repeat the parameter to request content in several locales:

GET /locations/{id}?locale=es-MX&locale=fr-FR

The response includes translations for each requested locale where content is available.

Default: When locale is omitted, the API defaults to en-US.

Fallback chain

When content is not available for your requested locale, the system walks a fallback chain to find the next best match. The chain follows locale parent relationships, then falls back to English.

Example: Requesting locale=es-AR triggers this fallback chain:

es-AR → es-MX → es → en-US → en

The system tries each locale in order and returns the first one for which content exists. The language field on each translation object tells you which locale was actually resolved — so you can see that you requested es-AR but received es-MX content.

Additional fallback chain examples:

How the chain is built:

1. Start with the requested locale itself
2. Follow declared parent locales until a root is reached
3. Append the language-only prefix (e.g. es from es-AR) if not already in the chain
4. Append en-US if not already present
5. Append en as the final backstop

Enum translations vs. content translations

The locale parameter affects two types of content differently:

Content translations (arrays)

Fields like names, descriptions, and addresses are returned as arrays of translation objects. When you pass multiple locales, the response includes one entry per locale that has content available:

{
  "names": [
    {"language": "es-MX", "value": "El Bistró de Locale", "primary": false},
    {"language": "fr-FR", "value": "Le Bistrot Locale", "primary": false}
  ]
}

Each array element resolves independently through the fallback chain.

Enum translations (single labels)

Fields like category display_name, award names, and subrating type labels are single strings, not arrays. They resolve using only the first requested locale (with its fallback chain):

{
  "top_level_category": {
    "id": "10022",
    "display_name": "Restaurante"
  }
}

Full list of fields affected:

API vs. feeds

The locale parameter works differently depending on whether you're using the API or receiving data feeds:

📘

The locale query parameter always accepts dashed format (es-MX) regardless of API version. The V1/V2 format difference only applies to locale codes in response bodies.

Multiple locale behavior

When you pass multiple locales, the response includes content for each locale where a translation is available (after fallback resolution):

GET /locations/{id}?locale=es-MX&locale=fr-FR&locale=pt-BR

{
  "names": [
    {"language": "es-MX", "value": "El Bistró de Locale", "primary": false},
    {"language": "fr-FR", "value": "Le Bistrot Locale", "primary": false},
    {"language": "pt", "value": "O Bistrô Locale", "primary": false}
  ]
}

Note that pt-BR resolved to pt via the fallback chain (the language field shows what was actually found).

Deduplication: If two requested locales resolve to the same underlying translation (e.g. both es-AR and es-CL resolve to es-MX), the translation appears only once in the response.

Supported locales

English

Spanish

French

German

Portuguese

Dutch

Italian

Chinese

Arabic

Single-locale languages

Error handling

Passing an unsupported locale code returns a 400 Bad Request response:

{
  "status": 400,
  "type": "https://docs.terra.tripadvisor.com/errors/validation",
  "title": "Validation Error",
  "detail": "locale[0]: Unsupported factual locale 'xx-YY'. Supported factual locales: ar, ar-EG, da-DK, de-AT, de-CH, de-DE, el-GR, en-AU, en-CA, en-HK, en-IE, en-IN, en-MY, en-NZ, en-PH, en-SG, en-UK, en-US, en-ZA, es-AR, es-CL, es-CO, es-ES, es-MX, es-PE, es-VE, fi, fr-BE, fr-CA, fr-CH, fr-FR, he-IL, hu, id-ID, it-CH, it-IT, ja-JP, ko-KR, nl-BE, nl-NL, no-NO, pl, pt-BR, pt-PT, ru-RU, sv-SE, th-TH, tr-TR, vi-VN, zh, zh-HK, zh-TW"
}

Bare language codes (e.g. en instead of en-US) are also rejected — use the full locale code from the supported list above.