Airbnb Calendar Blocked... But I didn't do that...

[Keith39]

Hi All,

All of a sudden today it seems that my Airbnb calendar is showing entirely blocked.  But I didn't do that... Calendar sync with my external calendar-of-record is working (that is, booked dates from other systems are showing up), but all my dates are overridden as "blocked".  

This seems to have just happened today.  Also, other calendars that my Airbnb calendar feed into are also showing blocked as a result.

Anybody else seeing this strange behavior?

Thanks and Best Regards,

Keith

[Keith39]

I'm pretty sure the source of this issue is that "Availability Preferences" is not functioning correctly and stressed that in my phone call with Airbnb rep. (In my case, what I see is that changing the booking window doesn't change anything at all.)

[Elly0]

I deleted my synced Apple calendar and the Availability setting is now showing the acurate number of months available, so perhaps syncing calendars is the source of the bug.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

Same here, I unblocked it manually

[Carla-and-Jose0]

Same thing happened to me, not once by a couple of times. Had to manually unblock all. I am quite concerned about this as it syncs as blocked on my other platform. I have sent them feedback. Is there any way to contact Airbnb directly by phone, like a customer service number? can't find any contact.

[Keith39]

I'm local to SF, so called and held for a VERY long time to get to a rep who took my report and said they would refer to the tech team. 

Im concerned about this too, and seem to be one of the first folks to see it, so took the time to report. 

[Keith39]

Yes, I've seen that the blocks propagate downstream if you sync from Airbnb to another calendar. 

Until the problem is fixed, I went to my other platform (Orbirental in my case) and disconnected sync for the time being.  Note that I had to manually delete the synced "blocks" on that calendar as well. 

[Keith39]

Hi All,

I am posting this reply to my own post in order to provide a detailed description of this problem to Airbnb support/web team:

Early today (somewhere around 10 or 11 AM PST?) I noticed that my Airbnb calendar was showing *every* date as blocked (we are listing [link removed]).  This is not a change that I made.  Many other hosts have discovered the same issue. I suspect that many (or even all) listings that use the "Booking window" preference to control availability may be affected.

To recitify the *immediate* issue, I manually deleted some of the erroneous blocks (or, I should say more correctly -- BLOCK -- I'm pretty sure it's a single block that was set by the Booking window preference, which is currently mis-behaving -- please read on for details).

Here are my observations about this issue, which I believe relates to the following:

* My listing uses the "Booking window" preference (Availability settings > Reservation preferences > Booking window) to limit availability.  I find that, currently, changing the "Booking window" preference does not correctly block dates out into the future.  Basically, it *does not* block or unblock the correct dates (it currently seems to do *nothing*).  Other hosts experiencing this issue have reported slightly different (but still incorrect) behavior, such as the Booking window pref blocking an incorrect date range.  (In my case, it seems to currently do nothing.)

* What affected hosts have observed however, is that sometime recently (this morning? at least that's when it seems to have happened to me) ALL of our calendar dates became blocked.  Some hosts (like me) report being able to manually delete the blocks, others seem to be unable to delete the blocks and restore availability of my listing.  However, I still seem to have a block from Nov 1 2017 until the end of time which is still on my calendar.  I could manually delete it, but I've left it there in case that's helpful with troubleshooting.

* Downstream ICS impact:  The "blocked" dates (which again, I think were coming from the "Booking window" pref, which has gone haywire) actually propagate to downstream calendars if your sync from Airbnb to an external platform.  For example, I usually have my Airbnb calendar synced to export to Orbirental.  When this problem started occurring this morning, my Orbirental calendar was completely blocked, because it was filled up by these erroneous blocked dates from Airbnb.  (I mention this because I *think* -- I'm not sure -- that blocked dates that come from "Booking window" settings *did not* propogate downstream in the past.)  I had to manually delete those blocked dates on my Orbirental calendar.  In the case of my external platform (Orbirental), resyncing my Airbnb calendar to Orbirental did not seem to remove the blocks.  (The source of that issue may or may not be Airbnb's fault, but I'm providing detail here.)

* Upstream ICS impact: This issue does not seem to affect (or be caused by) inbound synced calendars.  In my listing's case, I sync an external calendar source (my master calendar) *to* Airbnb.  All imported/synced reservations continued to show up properly.  Resyncing the incoming calendar *did not* remove the blocked dates (which, again, I'm pretty sure are coming from / related to the "Booking window" prefs). 

* I reported this issue via phone to a rep who may or may not have understood it well. However, she did say that she would relay the issue to the technical team.

* The issue is not easily "screen shottable" and is not "reproducible", per se, except that in affected accounts (like mine), the "Booking window" preference does not seem to have any affect on available dates (or it blocks/unblocks the *wrong* dates as reported by some hosts).  But what *has* happened is that affected listings are currently unbookable/unavailable due to the presence of a block that affects all calendar dates.

Hope this helps to resolve this issue!

Best regards,

Keith

[link removed]

[Keith39]

A little more detail on this issue:

* The issue *may*, in fact, be related to (or affect) hosts who have an imported calendar synced to their listings.  As noted by another host above, deleting the imported calendar and then resyncing it *seems* to cause the "Reservation preferences > Booking window" to operate more normally.  In my case, I found that after deleting and re-importing the external calendar, "Booking window" did adjust blocked dates.  However, not all functionality was correct.  I find that setting a 6- or 12-month booking window results in correct unavailable calendar dates.  However, setting a 3-month booking window did not (the available dates remained unchanged).  Also observed that, in one instance, changing from 6-month window to 12-month window left a "stranded" month of blocked dates in July 2017.  (So, works "better", but not as expected.) 

[Keith39]

Just an update for anyone following this issue: Am told by Airbnb support that they are aware of the issue and that it would be fixed today. Normal behavior should, hopefully, be restored shortly, if it isn't already. 

Best regards,

Keith

[Vali1]

I have the same issue. Sort of. 

I  have no bookings where I used to have many enquires and always full. 

I'm having issues with Airbnb due to some problems and I thought they cut me off.Everyday there

has been a line across the day. Everyday I remove this. Now I see that on my listing (booking settings/calendar/availability settings/same day CUT OFF TIME) was set to 6 am. 

I'm certain it's always been 11 pm. I can't imagine Airbnb being underhanded about my listing and not notifying me. It's been upsetting. 

[Patricia68]

I have just tried to block dates on my calenders and all of a sudden the window at the right hand side (block or available and pricing) doesn't appear. What the hell! Not sure what's going on but airbnb are becoming too crafty and shifty!!!! Can someone let me know if they are having the same issue. I need to block the dates. I am on instant book and don't have any control. I am in Perth Western Australia Cheers Pat

[Keith39]

You may want to start a new thread for this question. However, perhaps just use the app? I'm having no problem selecting dates there and entering blocks. Just tried it. 

Best regards,

Keith

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone ( @Keith39, @Elly0, @Carla-and-Jose0, @Branka-and-Silvia0, @Mike226, @Dee33, @Dede0, @Renate30, @Peter337,@Lucinda-Beaumont0),

For those of you who don't know me, hello! My name is Lizzie and I am the Online Community Manager here.

Thanks for starting this topic here Keith, it is clearly quite a prominent issue with many of you here. It is really helpful that you have provided a breakdown of what you are seeing and that you are also reporting the potential bug via the method Steve mentions. 

I was wondering if you are finding the same display when you use a different browser? Also, when did you first start to notice your calendar was like this? Have you made any changes which you think could be related for example? 

I will be reporting this back to the team on my side as well and the more information we can provide the better - so as I said the overview is a really great help. If you can, please do keep me posted on this.

Thank you,

Lizzie

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

Hi @Lizzie 

it happens to me also at Tuesday, the same time like to other hosts, all dates were blocked. I unblocked it manually

I don't have syinc calendar but I have availability settings - booking window 6 months

I can change booking window to all future dates or 6 months and it is ok

If I change it to 3 months it doesn't work, all future dates are open

[Keith39]

Hi @Lizzie,

Thanks for following up here.  Do note that the immediate problem seems to have been (mostly) resolved by Airbnb's engineering team sometime later in the day and I've not seen it occur again in exactly the way I originally described.

However, I am seeing that there is still a "bug" with how Calendar > Availability Settings > Booking Window is behaving.  What I'm going to describe is currently reproducable in my account on both Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers:

1. I typically have my Booking Window set to 6 months and, since the "fix" Tuesday night, the "moving block" that represents unbookable dates has moved automatically and correctly.
   
   
2. But just now (to test things out for you), I tried setting my Booking Window to different settings.
   
   
3. What I find is that selecting "12 months" or "6 months" sets blocked dates correctly.  However, if I select "3 months", the block should start sometime in April 2017, but the block begins instead on July 1.  So, there's still some bad behavior going on that should be investigated.

In answer to your other questions:  I think I *may* have been one of the very first people to see this problem on Tuesday morning.  I happened to be working on a quote for a guest who booked with us directly and I was comparing our direct pricing with my pricing on other platforms.  I had both my Airbnb calendar and Orbirental calendars open.  (In case you're not familiar, Orbirental is a web-based property management system. Usually, both my Airbnb and VRBO/HomeAway calendars sync into that calendar via ICS import -- a little more on this, below...)

Sometime in the 10 or 11 AM hour on Tuesday I realized that my Airbnb calendar was greyed out.  I refreshed the view on my Oribirental calendar and (as you would expect), I noticed that my Orbirental calendar had become completely booked/blocked, whereas it wasn't before.  (Which one would [maybe] expect to happen, since the Airbnb calendar feeds into Orbirental via ICS import.)

So that's how I realized there was something wrong with Airbnb calendar.  I didn't originally think about the Booking Window settings and was just concerned about restoring at least some of my dates' availability, so I manually deleted some of the blocks.  (Similarly, my Orbirental calendar was now full of individual blocks in between every previously-booked date, so went about manually deleting those as well.)

Having restored some availability, I dug deeper into Calendar settings to see what might be causing the issue and discovered the behaviors that I later reported in more detail in this thread.  

One final note/feature request:  As a by-product of this issue, I realized that the blocked dates created by the "Booking Window" settings actually propagate downstream to other calendars via ICS.  At least for my use case, this isn't ideal behavior because that has the net effect of blocking those dates on the booking calendar on my dedicated website for our rental (www.evillapalmsprings.com), which is powered by Orbirental.  It would be great if there were an export option or argument for the Airbnb calendar ICS export that would *not* include Booking Window-generated blocks.  (I pointed this out to the team at Orbirental and they are looking into whether there's some way to identify those blocked dates in the exported Airbnb calendar and ignore them if desired. In the meantime, I've stopped synchronizing my Orbirental calendar with Airbnb's calendar.)

I realize that this probably isn't a particularly high-priority issue for *Airbnb*, but the fact is that while Airbnb is an excellent channel for our rental, we must also rely on other booking channels (direct, VRBO/HomeAway and even lousy TripAdvisor) to ensure success... And more flexible calendar export options would be helpful.  (For example, VRBO/HA's calendar export has an option to not include "tentative" dates, which is great. For all intents and purposes, the VRBO calendar serves as my "master" calendar at the present time.)

Thanks for taking the time to check in on this issue and thanks so much for sharing this information wth the Airbnb web team!

Best Regards,

Keith