If you advertise your property on multiple booking platforms (such as Airbnb, HomeAway, Booking.com, …) then you know how important it is to block your reservations from one platform to all the other platforms. Failing to do so will quickly result in double bookings!
You could keep all your calendars in sync by manually updating all the platforms from the moment you have a new booking. But soon or later you will make a mistake or you will forget to update your calendars.
That’s why you should configure all of your calendars to update automatically.
This is not very difficult since most platforms support the iCalendar format.
So basically, for each property/platform you will have a unique URL (= a web address) that represents the calendar for that property on that platform. Now you just need to register that URL on all the other platforms that you’re using (for the same property).
Let’s say, you use Airbnb, HomeAway & Booking.com for your property “Lake Side Villa”, then all of these platforms will supply you with an URL, something like:
https://airbnb.com/lakesidevilla.ics
https://homeaway.com/lakesidevilla.ics
https://booking.com/lakesidevilla.ics
(these are just fictitious URLs, see also the bottom of this post for detailed instructions)
Note that these URLs usually have the “.ics” extension, meaning that they contain calendar data.
Now you just need to register each of these URL’s on all the other platforms you’re using:
https://airbnb.com/lakesidevilla.ics –> register on HomeAway & Booking.com
https://homeaway.com/lakesidevilla.ics –> register on Airbnb & Booking.com
https://booking.com/lakesidevilla.ics –> register on Airbnb & HomeAway
After you registered all these URLs, you will enjoy the comfort of having all your calendars in sync without manual work.
So basically you don’t need extra tools to have this calendar synchronization in place.
In the next post we will explain howto use the same mechanism to import your bookings from different platforms into your AirCare.rentals account.
Here are some links with platform specific info:
Airbnb: How do I sync my Airbnb calendar with another calendar
HomeAway: How do I sync my HomeAway calendar with another calendar?