How to Sync Your Airbnb and Booking.com Calendars

Listing your vacation rental property on both Airbnb and Booking.com, is a great way to increase exposure for your properties. But it can also increase the chances your property will get double bookings—and we all know how much of a headache those can be.

Thankfully, there is now a way to sync your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars to help prevent multiple guests from booking the same dates on different platforms. Airbnb and Booking.com use the same iCal calendar format and can easily be synced with each other and with other calendars like your Google calendar.

Follow this two-part process to learn how to sync your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars.

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Pro Tip: Your Airbnb and Booking.com calendar sync usually takes 2+ hours to update. For a real-time sync that prevents double bookings, use a channel manager.

Part 1: Import your Airbnb calendar into Booking.com

The first step you’ll take to sync your Airbnb calendar with Booking.com is to get the Airbnb iCal URL for the calendar you want to sync.

1. Go to your Airbnb dashboard > Listings and select a listing
2. Go to Pricing and availability > Calendar sync
3. Click Export Calendar
4. Copy the Airbnb calendar link/URL

Now you have the Airbnb iCal calendar URL copied, it’s time to import it into Booking.com.

5. In your Booking.com account, click on the Calendar or Rates & Availability tab, and select Sync Calendars.
6. Click on Add calendar connection.
7. Paste your Airbnb calendar link into the field, give it a name, and then click Next step.

Your Booking.com calendar will now pull in bookings from Airbnb.

Part 2: Import your Booking.com calendar into Airbnb

Now, do the same thing but in reverse—sync your Booking.com calendar with Airbnb.

1. Still in your Booking.com account, click on Copy link to copy your Booking.com iCal link.
2. Go back to your Airbnb listing, and under Sync Calendars, click Import Calendar.
3. Paste your Booking.com calendar link, name your calendar (e.g., Booking.com), and click Import Calendar.

In your Booking.com account, you should now see your Airbnb calendar in your overview of connections. You’ll likely see the status as Activating while the connection is being set up. Once your calendars are synced, the status will change to OK.

And that’s it! Your Booking.com calendar will now pull in bookings from Airbnb, and vice versa.

Here’s a YouTube video that walks through the steps we just covered, showing exactly how to sync Airbnb calendar with Booking.com.

How to Avoid Double Bookings

Remember that your iCal calendars will not update immediately. Airbnb and Booking.com calendars usually take a couple of hours to update. This leaves room for the possibility of double bookings.

However, the chances that two different guests will book the same dates within a few hours of each other may be relatively low.

But if you’re concerned about the possibility of double bookings, you do have a couple of options.

1. Manually Refresh Your Calendars

You can manually sync your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars by clicking the Update/Refresh buttons in your Airbnb or Booking.com account whenever you get a new booking. This isn’t ideal, however, since syncing your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars was done to avoid manually updating them. Still, if you’re available as booking notifications come in, this is something you could consider doing.

2. Use a Vacation Rental Channel Manager

The simplest and most effective way to avoid double bookings is to use a channel manager. Software platforms like Lodgify and others offer channel management features to keep all your channels (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, direct booking website, etc.) synced. Check out our post on the best vacation rental channel managers.

Make sure whatever channel manager you choose uses an API integration rather than relying on iCal calendar sync (which is the process we covered in this post). Otherwise, you’ll experience the same time delay.

Written by The Floorspace Team

This article was written as a collaborative effort by multiple members of the Floorspace team. We're a group of internet marketers and designers, with a wide range of experience marketing and managing short-term rentals.