Airbnb and Booking.com are undoubtedly two of the most popular booking platforms worldwide. Airbnb boasts over seven million listings, while Booking.com claims to have more than 28 million. The sheer popularity of these online travel agencies (OTAs) means most short-term rental hosts want to list their properties on both platforms simultaneously.
Although this could be considered a smart move depending on your business model, it certainly presents its own challenges.
The main one, of course, is to prevent guests from one platform booking your accommodation on dates that are already booked on the other, a situation that, if it happens repeatedly, can jeopardize your budding vacation rental business.
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The solution is to keep the Airbnb and Booking.com calendars synchronized, and this quick guide will shed some light on this (very important) issue for hosts using both Airbnb and Booking.com. We’ll walk you through two helpful methods available for synchronizing Airbnb and Booking.com calendars, their advantages and disadvantages, and which option best suits your needs.
Option 1: Syncing Airbnb and Booking.com with a channel manager
Channel managers are currently the most popular option among hosts and vacation rental managers syncing calendars because they are the most convenient (and effective) alternative.
Cool, but what is a channel manager?
A channel manager is a tool that allows for the automatic synchronization of not only calendars but also listings, prices, descriptions, and photos on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other OTAs, like Expedia, Vrbo, Google Vacation Rentals, and even your own direct booking website if you have one.
Advantages of using a channel manager to synchronize calendars
Obviously, using a channel manager has many advantages compared to iCal.
First and foremost, you can relax about your calendar. It will always be up-to-date on all the platforms where you have listed your properties, regardless of the number of websites they are on.
Furthermore, the communication between channels through a channel manager is two-way and instantaneous. That means any changes you make on Booking.com, for example, will be reflected in Airbnb as soon as they’re made.
Finally, synchronization through a channel manager not only allows for exporting reservation dates but also updates rates, photos, and descriptions of your properties on Airbnb and Booking.com simultaneously from a single place. Imagine how much time—and energy—you can save!
Disadvantages of using a channel manager to synchronize calendars
Syncing Airbnb and Booking.com calendars using a channel manager comes with only two disadvantages. Cost and compatibility.
Let’s start with the latter. If you want to list on the major platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, Vrbo, etc.), you’ll almost never have issues. The vast majority of them are compatible with channel managers.
However, if you want to use less-known websites, they may not offer instant synchronization through a channel manager. Nevertheless, there’s no need to worry: In these cases, you can always use iCal on them and the channel manager on the rest.
Now, let’s address that crucial issue: the cost. Using iCal is free, while a channel manager comes with a price tag. Is it expensive? Not really, but each person must decide whether the investment is worthwhile or not.
For reference, vacation rental software with an integrated channel manager like Lodgify is available for only $12 per month per property. Compare it to the potential earnings you can generate (you can use our income calculator) and decide for yourself whether using a channel manager is worth it.
How to sync Airbnb and Booking.com calendars with a channel manager
If your business needs an Airbnb and Booking.com channel manager, you’ll first need to sign up for vacation rental software.
Lodgify offers a convenient way to synchronize your property rentals’ availability between its platform and popular booking platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com using iCalendar links. You can follow the tips below to synchronize your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars using Lodgify or find a step-by-step process here.
Steps to sync calendars:
- Go to your Main Menu in the Lodgify dashboard and select “Settings.”
- Select “Calendar import/export” and then click on “Add calendar.”
- A pop-up window will appear; insert the external iCal URL.
- Choose the corresponding rental; you will see your rental’s names and IDs, followed by room names and IDs.
- Name the source of the link for your personal reference.
- Click “Confirm mapping” to establish the link.
That’s all there is to it! The calendar auto-refreshes every two hours. If you need immediate synchronization, click “Synchronize now.”
By following these steps, you can efficiently synchronize your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars with Lodgify’s channel manager and import tool, ensuring consistent availability across all your booking platforms.
You can also use the same tool to export your Lodgify calendar, including your direct bookings and manual bookings, to the appropriate section of the app/website you want to export the calendar to.
Alternatively, Lodgify offers a free onboarding service where a specialist will help you set up the connection to the booking platforms for you—at no extra cost.
Option 2: Booking.com and Airbnb calendar sync with iCal
An Airbnb and Booking.com sync doesn’t mean you have to break the bank, as you can do it for free through iCal. However, its limitations should definitely be considered.
Now, when we say iCal, we’re referring to a type of file that can be used to store and exchange scheduling data, whether on Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or any other calendar compatible with .ics files.
Advantages
Almost all vacation rental platforms will allow you to export your booking calendar as an iCal file, which you can later import into any calendar app relatively easily.
Disadvantages
The main drawback of using iCal to perform a Booking.com and Airbnb calendar sync lies in the one-way nature of the system. Did we lose you there?
To put it simply: when you use iCal, you are essentially copying your Airbnb or Booking.com calendar and pasting it into an external calendar app. Not only is this a somewhat tedious task, but it can take up to 24 hours to automatically update.
The consequences? On one hand, you’ll need to constantly monitor the calendars, and on the other, there’s a significant risk of double bookings as your business starts to pick up.
Ok, but how can I do it?
As mentioned earlier, synchronizing Airbnb and Booking.com calendars via iCal is a tiresome task, but it’s relatively straightforward.
Typically, the process involves accessing the calendar settings on the respective platform (Airbnb, Booking.com, or any other) and then the calendar synchronization settings, where you can download the .ics (iCal) file necessary to import the information into your favorite calendar app.
Of course, you’ll need to do this twice: once on Airbnb and then again on Booking.com.
Synchronize your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars now
Few things are as important for a vacation rental to operate smoothly as keeping the calendars of Airbnb and Booking.com synchronized, thus avoiding double bookings, overbookings, and overall chaos and disorganization.
We hope this article has helped you better understand the ways to connect Airbnb with Booking.com and its advantages and disadvantages.
Try Lodgify’s channel manager today for free and see how easy it is to sync your listings and make double bookings a thing of the past!
