Calendar Not Syncing Properly Between Airbnb and My Website Booking System

[Joe3792]

Hi Airbnb Community,

I’m having trouble syncing my Airbnb calendar with the booking system on my website. I’ve set up iCal synchronization, but there are issues with availability updates:

1. New bookings made on Airbnb aren’t consistently reflected on my website’s calendar, leading to potential double bookings.
2. When I update availability manually on my website, the changes take hours to appear on Airbnb, if at all.
3. Occasionally, past bookings reappear as available dates on my website, creating confusion.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

• Verified that the iCal URL is correct and refreshed the sync multiple times.
• Checked that my website supports the iCal format fully and doesn’t impose restrictions.
• Contacted my website host, who assured me there are no connectivity issues.

Has anyone experienced similar problems? Are there known limitations with Airbnb’s iCal sync, or should I consider switching to another method for better reliability?

Any advice or troubleshooting tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[Joe3792]

---

@Joe3792 wrote:

Hi Airbnb Community,

I’m having trouble syncing my Airbnb calendar with the booking system on my website. I’ve set up iCal synchronization, but there are issues with availability updates:

1. New bookings made on Airbnb aren’t consistently reflected on my website’s calendar, leading to potential double bookings.
2. When I update availability manually on my website, the changes take hours to appear on Airbnb, if at all.
3. Occasionally, past bookings reappear as available dates on my website, creating confusion.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

• Verified that the iCal URL is correct and refreshed the sync multiple times.
• Checked that my website supports the iCal format fully and doesn’t impose restrictions.
• Contacted my website host, who assured me there are no connectivity issues.

Has anyone experienced similar problems? Are there known limitations with Airbnb’s iCal sync, or should I consider switching to another method for better reliability?

Any advice or troubleshooting tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

---

Is there anyone who can help me with this?

[Rebecca]

Hello @Joe3792 👋

We've got a few hosts that may be able to support with this: @Joan2709, @Oksana127 and @Thomas3789 may be able to support with the calendar query. 

Have your searched the forum for previous conversations about this topic too? 

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

[Joan2709]

@Joe3792 

I remember reading another post regarding this and the solution was to make the calendar coding on your website refresh more often (not just manually refreshing). I'm not a website creater, but I believe there is a way for it to refresh and sync automatically using the coding. I'll see if I can find the other post, or maybe one of the other Hosts can respond.

[Thomas3789 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Joe3792 ,

That has to be incredibly frustrating. Time efficiency is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I have heard of people having success using property management systems. For example, I use Hospitable as my PMS and that provides a fairly smooth interaction between my Airbnb account and my website (as well as other OTA's). 

Not sure if that helps but hopefully so!

[Joe3792]

Thank you for your thoughtful response! I appreciate the suggestion of using a property management system like Hospitable. It seems like a promising solution to streamline synchronization across platforms. I hadn’t considered integrating a PMS, but it sounds like it could resolve the inconsistencies and delays I’m experiencing with iCal syncing. I'll definitely look into Hospitable and other similar tools to see how they can enhance the management of my bookings and availability across multiple platforms. Your experience with Hospitable gives me hope that there’s a more reliable way to handle this issue. If you don’t mind, could you share a bit more about how it works for you? For instance, does it handle real-time updates seamlessly, and is the setup process straightforward? **Any additional insights or tips you have on transitioning to a PMS would be greatly appreciated. Thank you again for pointing me in the right direction!

**[Link removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

[Greg79]

Hi @Joe3792 ,

Just yesterday, at the peak of the season, we ran into trouble with Airbnb. 

I'm using the Motopress hotel reservation system, and it works very well with Booking.com.

Unfortunately, not with Airbnb. The Airbnb booking system is poorly designed. I'm an expert in the reservation system and have used most of them since the beginning. 

What Airbnb is missing simple thing: the choice of what to sync bookings and blockings or bookings only. It's very important to have a Booking-only option.

Instead, Airbnb is blocking days if you have no price, blocking one day after the reservation.

As a result, I have to copy their reservation to my calendar and export my calendar without importing theirs. 

In effect, I had to limit my listing to control it.

Their system is slow, who knows why they keeping calendars from years before and you my be on wrong year if you not coshes. It happened to me.

And what good it does if you have to write in your calendar reservation instead have it imported.

Nothings change, they have several places for the same things and is hard to figure what is applied and what is not. 

Just yesterday we opened one room for reservation. Before we knew room was booked on Booking.com. We received message from Booking about reservation. 40 minutes later Airbnb send us "Confirmed"booking in the same room. Took us half night of correspondence and today. Their API did not worked but they charge us for Canceling reservation. We did not made reservation, we didn't have room available, room was booked earlier on. We know how it looks like if you do not refresh page. 

[Joan2709]

@Joe3792 

Depending on where you listing is located (your profile says "Guest" so I can't check), if you switch to using a PMS, Airbnb can switch you automatically to Simplifed pricing instead of split fee on their Service Fee

This means you as Host would pay the entire Service fee instead of it being split between Guest and Host. If you are based in the USA, Canada, the Bahamas, Mexico, Argentina, Taiwan or Uruguay enabled with smart pricing settings you should not be affected.

Airbnb Service Fee

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1857#section-heading-6-0