iCal synchronisation with Airbnb and Booking.com: how it works

What is iCal?

Your holiday home is on Airbnb and Booking.com. Fine, more reach. But now there are two calendars to keep up to date, and the risk of double bookings grows with every day you forget to update a platform. iCal synchronisation solves that.

iCal (also written as iCalendar or .ics) is a standard format for calendar data. It has been around for years and is used by Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook and nearly every booking platform. The idea is simple: a calendar application publishes its content as a URL. Any other application that knows that URL can read the data and show it in its own calendar.

For holiday-home hosts that means: your occupancy calendar on Airbnb is available as an iCal link. You give that link to Booking.com, so that Booking.com automatically knows which dates are occupied. And the other way around. That way you only have to enter a booking in one place, and the rest adjusts automatically.

How iCal synchronisation works in practice

The principle is a feed: a URL that contains calendar information in iCal format. That feed is fetched regularly by the platform that has set it up as a subscription. "Regularly" means in most cases every 15 minutes to a few hours, depending on the platform.

That is an important detail. iCal synchronisation is not real-time. If someone blocks a period on Airbnb at 10am, Booking.com only knows once the next synchronisation cycle takes place. In practice that is usually fine, but during very popular periods it can still go wrong. Bear that in mind.

The synchronisation works in two directions if you set it up properly:

• Export: your calendar shares occupancy data through a URL that others can load in.
• Import: your calendar loads in the occupancy data from an external platform, so that you see everything in one overview.

Setting up iCal on Airbnb

On Airbnb you find the iCal settings in your account under "Calendar", then "Availability" and next "Sync calendars". Here you see two options:

1. Export: Airbnb shows a URL that you can copy and pass on to other platforms or apps.
2. Import: you enter an external iCal URL. Airbnb fetches it periodically and blocks the occupied periods in your calendar.

Copy the export URL from Airbnb. You need it to set things up in Booking.com (or in Rentiplanner).

Setting up iCal on Booking.com

On Booking.com you go to "Property page", then to "Rates and availability" and then "Availability". Here you find the option to export an iCal link (from Booking.com) and to import an external calendar.

Paste the Airbnb export URL into the import field of Booking.com. Booking.com reads in the Airbnb bookings and automatically blocks those dates in your Booking.com calendar.

Then do the same in the opposite direction: copy the Booking.com export URL and import it into Airbnb.

Linking iCal to a central calendar

With two platforms the direct link is still manageable. As soon as you are on three or more platforms, or have your own website, it quickly becomes hard to keep track of. A central calendar solves that.

With Rentiplanner you create a central calendar for your property. You import the iCal feeds of all platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com, Homeaway, and so on) into that central calendar. That central calendar in turn returns its own iCal URL, which you then pass on to all platforms as an import.

This is how it works:

1. Rentiplanner imports Airbnb bookings and Booking.com bookings
2. Rentiplanner shows all bookings together in one overview
3. Rentiplanner exports a combined iCal URL
4. Each platform imports that URL and so knows the full occupancy

Common mistakes with iCal synchronisation

Not checking the synchronisation regularly. iCal feeds can break if a platform changes its URL structure or if there is a login problem. Check monthly whether the feeds still work by testing with a recent booking.

Not setting up both directions. Setting up only an export or only an import is not synchronisation. You have to set up both sides to genuinely avoid double bookings.

Allowing for delay. iCal is not real-time. During the Easter holidays or other peak periods there is a chance of a double booking in the short window between two synchronisation cycles. Some hosts then keep a manual check, certainly in the first few days after a popular period opens.

Forgetting blocked periods. If you stay in the property yourself for a week or want to schedule a cleaning period, you have to mark those as occupied too. Otherwise those periods stay visible as available on all platforms.

iCal and other calendar apps

Besides the booking platforms, you can also link the iCal feed of your calendar to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. That way you have your rental calendar integrated into the diary you already use anyway. Handy when you want to see quickly on a mobile device whether a particular week is free.

In Google Calendar you add an "Other calendar" through a URL. In Apple Calendar you use "Subscribe to calendar". In Outlook you choose "Add calendar" and then "From internet".

Summary: what you need

• The iCal export URL of every platform you advertise on
• The iCal import setting on every platform, filled in with the URLs of the other platforms
• Or: a central calendar (such as Rentiplanner) that merges all feeds and provides one combined URL
• A regular check every month to see whether all feeds still work

iCal synchronisation is not a perfect solution for every situation, but it is by far the simplest way to keep track of availability across several platforms without updating everything manually.