Google calendar sync receiving wrong end dates from Airbnb

Answered!
Terence55
Level 2
Burbank, CA

Google calendar sync receiving wrong end dates from Airbnb

Since entering the summer release program I have been having a couple issues with Calendar sync and the 2 nights between bookings setting not being honored. Airbnb chat support is useless in getting these software bugs reported to the correct people. I can't be the only one having this issue.
If someone is booked from the 15th to the 17th for example, on Google calendar it will show them checking out on the 16th. And the entry is not editable in Google calendar as it is a locked file coming from Airbnb.
I also have the "block the night before and after a booking" setting enabled since Covid. Now, even though that is set, Airbnb is allowing next day bookings. I think these two bugs may be related.

Top Answer
Bhumika
Community Manager
Community Manager
Toronto, Canada

Hi @Terence55 @Aaron1026, apologies for the delayed updates.

I wanted to circle back to this thread and let you know that if the host/guest is experiencing issues where reservation check-out dates are being inaccurately displayed on users' Google Calendar previews, Please be advised that this is not an issue on Airbnb's Calendar sync side, but a Google calendar's issue.

 

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24 Replies 24

It's on Google's end. I looked at the text in the file that AirBnB sends to Google and the dates are correct. So Google is screwing up on their end. I submitted it as a bug on the Google side but never heard anything from them.
Maybe if everyone who has this problem points it out to Google they might fix it.

It's not really a google issue. Seems like incorrect airbnb implementation of the iCal spec.

Here is the iCal spec and the Event Component (VEVENT) section: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5545#section-3.6.1

 

To save you some time it states that:

The "DTEND" property for a "VEVENT" calendar component specifies 
the non-inclusive end of the event.

 To me that means that if I have a 2 day reservation that starts on 11/3/2023 and ends on 11/5/2023 and the iCal export from Airbnb reads:

DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20231103
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20231105

then the airbnb export is incorrect because 11/5/2023 will not be included per the spec. That DTEND should have value of

DATE:20231106

 in order to be included by google, office and other major companies that comply with the iCal official spec

Thanks. If that's the case then how do we get this bumped back to active on AirBnB support?

Was an actual solution ever found for this issue?

No. It's still broken. There appears to be no humans at Airbnb to deal with this. I'm attaching a pic. The top shows the actual reservation on Airbnb's site. The bottom shows what lands in Google Calendar.
https://ibb.co/frFGGNS 

Lesley532
Level 2
Bend, OR

The reason for the confusion is that the ical file imports nights booked, not days booked. Therefore, the last day on your google or outlook calendar is the night before. If you think of it that way, it shouldn't be a problem to understand your google calendar. The check-out day is not a night. Hope this helps!

Simon4782
Level 1
Scotland, United Kingdom

This does not help.

 

In the airbnb calendar you can see the booking going through to departure day.

This looks to be firmly an airbnb issue and ical allows a correct solution.

 

Reading the bookings on Google calendar is infuriating and confusing

 

Is there an escalation process to get this into some airbnb engineering hands. 

I have found no way to get anything to an understanding human who can get it handled at Airbnb. This has gone on since the summer update last year, and no one at the company seems to care. 
It's very frustrating.

Yeah, AirBnB support is useless.  This works fine with my VRBO calendar in Google.  It's clearly an AirBnB issue and the "escalate to support'  process is akin to jumping into a black hole.  So frustrating.