Anyone having issues syncing Airbnb Calendar with Google Calendar

[Tom371]

Dear All,

I have set my Airbnb calendar to sync with my google calendar and it all seemed fine BUT when I update the availability or receive a booking on the Airbnb calendar it seems to take some time (several hours) for the updates to show up on the google calendar. No amount of page refreshing has any effect.

Does anyone have an idea of why it's so slow and any idea of how to fix it?

Thanks in advance

TOM 🙂

[Sue853]

All set up but bookings taking ages to sync from Airbnb to google calendar. (3 days so far for one...)

i have to sync manually which defeats the object rather. Anyone got any tips/ tricks to make it happen automatically?

[Annie748]

Please help. There is no option on the google calendar to 'add a friends calendar' on my uk version. I am driven demended as none of the options I have googled work. Why cant airbnb sort this?

[Dave531]

you are not alone Annie833

[Nigel96]

I am trying to sync my Gogle calendar to AirBnB.  I click on Availability settings and import calendar.  I add the URL and the calendar name.  then a message pops up saying that there is a problem importing my calendar.

[Roberto1120]

If you just want to see your Airbnb calendar in your Google calendar, it is simple. First, you need to get your Airbnb calendar URL by going to your listing, then clicking:

Availability (top menu)

Export Calendar (Scroll down towards the bottom under "Sync Calendars")
Copy the link

The, in Google Calendars, go to:

Settings (gear icon in the top right)

Add calendar (left menu)

From URL (This appears after expanding the "Add Calendar" section of the menu)

Paste your calendar URL in URL of Calendar
Click "Add Calendar"

This will add a new calendar under "other calendars"
You can give it a friendly name by clicking on the current name in the left hand list of calendar names.

I do this all the time with many different calendars. It works.

[Roberto1120]

With all of above being said, the problem is that the way Airbnb exports their calendar is terrible!!!

They do not give you any client names or information. Only "Busy". Furthermore, they stop listings monthly. a listing that spans 3 months will have 3 separate entries added at different times. This makes it very difficult to plan ahead.

Airbnb, please fix your calendar export feature.

[Jo462]

Exactly.  For a "Booking" site, it seems beyond ridiculous what has happened to the calendar subscription "feature".  Ding!

[Jean4999]

Hi,

I also noticed that my google calendar was not updating to reflect the updated abnb calendar. It's still not updated after about 12 hours.

It would appear to be a Google problem - see below

I decided to do a bit of investigation so I copied the URL link (obtained from ABNB export) and pasted it into my web browser as as URL (it is after all a URL). I then opened the .ics listing as a text file and bingo - you can read (with difficulty) all the date events that ABNB exports. Each event is bounded by BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT with a date end and date start.
There is also a userID a description and summary.

The Description contains the guest reservation code and the last 4 digits of their phone number.

If the event is a blocked off event there is no description.

The summary contains Reserved for a guest booking or (not available) for a blocked off event.

Here is an example for a self blocked off period from 19th-21st June 2020 (I have deleted the UID)

BEGIN:VEVENT
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20200621
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20200619
UID:xxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@airbnb.com
SUMMARY:Airbnb (Not available)
END:VEVENT

Changing the ABNB dates and then refreshing the browser URL page immediately shows the date changes. This implies that any external app (Google calendar or otherwise) which interrogates the URL will see the updated dates. So the problem must be with Google Calendar not refreshing from the URL (even when hitting the refresh button inside Google calendar).

Sorry this doesn't really help but at least we can see where the problem lies.

The bottom line is that each organisation is only interested in itself and Google will not increase their refresh periods if it slows down their servers just to help out ABNB - it's not their core business!

[Jenny605]

Thanks guys. I was just told on the phone with an Airbnb specialist that you can't link these two calendars so I'm excited to try it now!!! 

[Paul7696]

Sept of 2021 and Google Calendar still doesn't refresh/sync quickly with AirBnB calendar. I did have success subscribing my iphone calendar to AirBnB calendar URL. Doesn't sync instantly but within 12 minutes on one test.  But that's a hell of a lot better than 12-24 hours with Google.