How to Sync Your Vacation Rental Calendars & Avoid Double Bookings

Listing your vacation rental on multiple channels can be a great way to get more eyes on your listing, and get more bookings. But it also requires that you keep all your calendars in sync, in order to avoid double bookings. Here’s what you need to know about vacation rental calendar synchronization.

How to Keep Your Vacation Rental Calendars in Sync

There are 3 main ways to keep all your short-term rental calendars in sync. You might also end up using some combination of these.

1. Manually Updating – Time-consuming and difficult to manage if you’re using Instant Book, but ensures no double bookings.
2. Using iCal – Easy to set up, free, supported by all the major listing sites, but has a possible time delay of up to a few hours.
3. Using a Channel Manager – Real-time syncing, convenient, and requires a paid subscription to a vacation rental management software (see our favorite channel managers).

Let’s take a look at each of these options in more detail.

1. Manually Updating Your Vacation Rental Calendars

If you are manually approving each booking (rather than using Instant Book), you can simply go into your other calendars and block the dates before approving a new booking.

This is a time-consuming process, especially if you are getting frequent bookings and listing on several channels. But if this fits in your workflow, this is an option you can consider to prevent double bookings.

2. Using iCal Sync

iCalendar (or shortened, iCal) is a standard file type (usually .ics) that allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information (e.g. vacation rental bookings). It was created to “provide the definition of a common format for openly exchanging calendaring and scheduling information across the Internet.” (Wikipedia)

The iCal format is widely used and supported by many different products, including Google Calendar, Apple/iOS/iCloud Calendar (formerly called iCal, which is admittedly confusing), and Microsoft Outlook.

In the vacation rental industry, all the major listing sites and OTAs use the iCal format, including: Airbnb, Booking.com, Homeaway (VRBO, Stayz), Expedia, Tripadvisor (FlipKey, HolidayLettings, HouseTrip, VacationRentals), CanadaStays, Homestay, Agoda, 9Flats, Wimdu, and many others.

How to Use iCal to Sync Vacation Rental Calendars

To sync your vacation rental iCal calendars, you simply need to export and import the calendars into each other. For example, if you want to sync Airbnb and Booking.com, you’d import your Airbnb calendar into Booking.com, and vice versa.

This creates a 2-way sync between the platforms. Here are some Airbnb iCal sync tutorials we put together:

• Sync Airbnb and VRBO Calendars
• Sync Airbnb and Booking.com Calendars

And here are the iCal calendar import/export instructions from some of the major listing sites:

• Airbnb iCal instructions
• VRBO/Homeaway iCal instructions
• Booking.com iCal instructions
• Tripadvisor iCal instructions

So if you want to connect Booking.com and VRBO, simply read each platform’s instructions for how to import and export iCal calendars.

If you’re taking direct bookings on your website, your booking software or plugin should have instructions for how to import/export iCal calendars to keep your website in sync with listing sites.

Syncing Multiple Listing Sites

If you are only listing on two sites, then you just this process is very straightforward. If you’re listing on 3 or more, there are two approaches you can take.

Approach 1: Connect All Calendars to Each Other

Make a list of each of your calendars, and go down setting up a 2-way connection between each one.

Approach 2: Sync All Calendars to a Master Calendar

Choose one calendar (e.g. Airbnb) to be your master calendar, and sync all other calendars with this one. This is also the approach used by channel managers, which allow you seamlessly sync multiple channels from one convenient dashboard.

The Issue With Relying on iCal Sync

While iCal is very convenient, it also has a major drawback. It can take several hours for your calendars to update. It’s up to each individual platform how often their calendars sync, but it usually takes at least 1 to 2 hours.

This leaves the possibility of double bookings. Fortunately, depending on how frequently you get bookings, the chance that two guests book the same dates on different platforms within a few hours of each other may be quite low.

But if you want to take further steps to prevent double bookings, you can either manually refresh your calendars when you receive a booking, or use a channel manager.

3. Using a Vacation Rental Channel Manager

The most convenient way to sync your vacation rental calendars is to use a channel manager. A channel manager is software that enables you to automatically distribute your property listings across multiple booking channels. Depending on the platform, this means you can sync calendar availability, rates, and other property details.

Investing in vacation rental management software is one of the best ways to manage and scale your business. Here are a few platforms we recommend if you’re interested in using a channel manager:

• Uplisting
• Hosthub
• OwnerRez
• iGMS
• Lodgify

If you want more information on choosing a channel manager, check out our guide to the best vacation rental channel managers.

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.