Booking.com calendar sync
that keeps up.
A booking on any channel closes those nights on Booking.com, usually inside a minute. There is a free way to do it, a faster way that costs $10, and one thing about Booking.com’s feed you should know before you trust the free one.
Laurie saved $4,000 last year when he switched to Host Port.
“I was paying hotel money for software I needed a training call to understand. Host Port does the same job for a fraction of it. One calendar, every channel, and nothing I have to think about on a changeover day. Moving all four took less than an hour to do.”
Laurie hosts four stays around Manly, NSW.See them on Airbnb
Two routes into Booking.com. One of them is free.
Both keep dates in step. They differ in what they carry, how quickly, and, unusually for Booking.com, in who is allowed to use them at all.
- Booked dates arrive in your HostPort calendar
- Your calendar goes back out as a feed Booking.com imports
- No rates, stay rules, guest details or messages
Worth knowing: Booking.com limits iCal to properties with 20 room types or fewer and at most one unit per room type, and excludes anyone already on a channel-manager connection.
Fine for one quiet home where a few hours of lag would not cost you the night.
- A booking anywhere closes those nights on Booking.com, and the reverse
- Rates and per-date minimum stay push out with the availability
- Reservations arrive with the guest, the dates and the total
- Booking.com guest messages thread into your unified inbox
Worth knowing: Needs a one-off authorisation you complete yourself in the Booking.com extranet, the walkthrough below is that step.
What you want the first weekend two guests could plausibly book the same night, and the only route if you have more than one unit of a room type.
Both iCal links live in one place, if that is what you came for: admin.booking.comRates & AvailabilityCalendarSync calendars , that one page holds your export link and the box to paste an import into. Start on iCal if you are unsure; it does not expire, and moving to the direct connection later is a setting, not a migration.
Booking.com’s calendar feed needs more care than the others.
Airbnb and Vrbo produce feeds that behave as you would expect. Booking.com’s has three properties that make it risky to import naively, and we would rather explain them than pretend all iCal is the same.
Every event says “CLOSED, Not available”
Airbnb’s feed tells you a reservation is a reservation. Booking.com’s does not, every event carries that same label, real reservations included. So an imported booking reaches you as a blocked date with no guest, no total and no message thread, indistinguishable from a date you closed by hand.
The identifiers change under you
Every importer answers one question from an event’s ID: is this the same thing I saw last time? Booking.com regenerates those IDs when it merges or modifies a busy block. The nights are still sold, but the event looks new and the old one looks deleted, so a naive importer cancels the booking that “vanished” and reopens the dates everywhere.
Lag is the sum of two schedules
Nothing pushes on iCal. A booking appears in one platform’s feed, then waits for the other to come and fetch it. Booking.com does not publish how often it pulls; Airbnb states three hours for its own imports. During that window the same night is genuinely on sale twice, to real people.
We know the second one first-hand. A Booking.com stay on one of our own domes imported cleanly in May and sat in the calendar for two months. On 1 July a single poll came back without it, the booking was auto-cancelled, the dates reopened, and a direct guest booked the same night the next day. The tell: Airbnb’s import of the same feed still showed the stay. Nothing had been released, the ID had simply changed.
What we do about it: nothing is cancelled off a single missed poll, a feed that comes back empty or half-empty has its cancellations dropped outright, and coverage is judged night by night rather than by ID, if those nights are still busy under any ID at all, the booking is left alone. If dates ever are released, an alert fires within fifteen minutes. It makes iCal survivable. It does not make it a real connection.
Booking.com is the one channel you authorise yourself.
Airbnb has an approve-this-app screen. Vrbo takes a sign-in. Booking.com does neither: you nominate a connectivity provider inside your own extranet. One screen, about a minute, but it happens in Booking.com’s product, on Booking.com’s clock.
- In the Booking.com extranet
Authorise a connectivity provider
AccountConnectivity ProviderSearchChannex.ioSign in at admin.booking.com, go to Account, then Connectivity Provider. Search for Channex, select Channex.io, and accept the XML Service Agreement. Channex is the connectivity platform HostPort runs on, which is why that is the name in the list rather than ours. This is the one step nobody can do for you.
- In HostPort
Give us the hotel ID
That is the whole form, no password, no OAuth screen. Your Booking.com hotel ID is the number in your extranet, and it is the only thing we ask for.
- In HostPort
We test the connection first
Before anything is mapped, the connection is tested against Booking.com. If step one has not landed on their side yet you are told exactly that, rather than given a generic failure. Seeing it once is normal; it is not something to keep clicking through.
- In HostPort
Map the room and rate plan
Your Booking.com rooms and rate plans are fetched and listed. Say which HostPort listing each room is. We map to the parent rate plan, so your non-refundable and early-booker rates keep deriving from it the way Booking.com expects.
- In HostPort
Activate, your bookings come with you
The connection is checked for readiness and activated, then your future Booking.com reservations are pulled in, so the calendar is populated before it pushes anything back out. If readiness fails you see what is missing instead of a green tick that is lying to you.
Two things that change once it is live
The extranet stops being where you edit rates and availability
Booking.com hands those fields to the connected channel manager and makes them read-only. That is their design, not a restriction we impose, and it is the change hosts are most surprised by. Everything else (content, photos, policies, reviews, finance) carries on exactly as before.
iCal and a provider connection cannot both run
Booking.com does not allow a property to do both, and it is a good rule, two systems writing the same calendar is a fight neither wins. When a listing moves onto the direct connection, its Booking.com iCal feed steps back to a read-only safety net.
Before you connect, get every existing booking and block into HostPort. The day-one double booking does not happen because sync is slow, it happens because the first push tells Booking.com a night is free when something the calendar never knew about had already taken it. Calendar true, then connect. That ordering is the whole trick.
What crosses, and what does not.
Worth being specific, because “two-way sync” is usually where the detail stops, including about the last two rows.
Arrives with the guest, the dates and the total, closes those nights everywhere else, and opens a message thread you can write in straight away.
Those nights close on Booking.com the moment it lands, from Airbnb, Vrbo, your direct page or your own hand.
Pushed per date across a 500-day horizon. A three-night minimum on one long weekend lands on those dates specifically, not as a blanket rule.
All push with the rest, so pausing a listing takes it off sale everywhere in one action.
Booking.com supports both. We do not currently push them per date. If your strategy depends on them, that is a real gap and you should know it now.
Nothing we run edits your Booking.com listing. Those stay yours to manage in the extranet.
Both directions are event-driven, so the usual case is under a minute. Behind it sit a sweep every two minutes, a reconcile every fifteen, and a full resync overnight, so the worst case is a delay, not a double booking. Guest messages come down the same connection into the unified inbox, with the thread opened at booking rather than at the guest’s first message.
Everyone syncs Booking.com. They price it very differently.
Most of these will keep your calendar straight. What varies is what you pay, whether you can find that out without a sales call, and whether there is a free route at all.
| Tool | Published price | Free tier | Per-channel fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HostPort | $10 AUD / listing / mo | Yes, iCal, unlimited | No | Published price, no sales call. |
| Guesty | From $9 / listing / mo (1 to 3) | No | Not disclosed | Quote-only above three listings. |
| Hostaway | Quote only | No | Not disclosed | No published pricing at any tier. |
| Lodgify | From ≈$16 / mo | No | No | Lower tiers add a booking fee. |
| Uplisting | £72 / mo flat (1 to 5) | No | No | Great value at five, poor at one. |
| Smoobu | From €29 / mo | No | No | Cheapest tier carries a booking fee. |
| Hospitable | From $29 / mo | Yes, limited | No | Genuinely competitive free tier. |
| iGMS | $21 / property / mo | No | No | Pay-per-night option suits seasonal. |
A snapshot, not a live feed, check each vendor before deciding. Where a rival suits you better, better you find out here than three months in: Hospitable’s free tier is a real one, and Uplisting’s flat fee is hard to beat at five listings though poor value at one.
What you get free, and what costs $10.
Unlimited listings. No credit card, no trial clock.
- One-way iCal sync with Booking.com, Airbnb and Vrbo
- Unified calendar across every listing
- Manual bookings, blocks and dated notes
- Mobile app with push alerts
- Commission-free direct booking page
- Team and cleaner access, unlimited seats
Per listing, per month, in AUD.
- Everything in Free
- Booking.com connected directly, not by iCal
- Two-way sync, usually inside a minute
- Rates and stay rules pushed with availability
- Booking.com guest messages in the unified inbox
- Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia, Agoda and Hipcamp the same way
Billed per listing, not per channel. Booking.com, Airbnb and Vrbo on one listing is $10, not $30. Stop paying and the listing falls back to free iCal rather than going dark. Beyond the channels we connect directly, Pro also opens the Channex marketplace, a catalogue of 480+ further OTAs you can connect through Channex itself, at no extra cost from us.
Common questions
Does Booking.com calendar sync work on the free plan?
Yes, over iCal, for unlimited listings and with no card. What you give up is everything except dates: iCal carries blocked dates and nothing else, so no rates, no stay rules, no guest details and no messages. You also inherit Booking.com’s refresh schedule rather than ours.
Where do I find my Booking.com iCal link?
In the extranet at admin.booking.com, under Rates & Availability, open the Calendar and look for Sync calendars. That one page holds both halves, the export link representing your Booking.com availability, and the place to paste an import link from another platform. Booking.com lets you choose whether the export carries booked dates only, or booked and closed dates.
How often does Booking.com refresh an imported calendar?
Booking.com does not publish a number, and we are not going to invent one for them. Their own guidance says only that calendars are not synced in real time and that individual reservations will not appear instantly. You will see “about an hour” quoted around the web; it traces to a single third-party assertion rather than to Booking.com. This is the strongest practical argument for the direct connection, it does not depend on anyone’s refresh interval.
My Booking.com calendar is not updating. What is wrong?
Usually one of four things. An export link was regenerated at one end and the other end is still polling the dead one. The feed is being fetched but the events sit outside the window being checked. Both platforms are waiting on each other’s refresh, so the lag is the sum of the two. Or you have a provider connection live, in which case iCal is no longer the mechanism at all. Start by pulling the feed manually at both ends.
Why does my Booking.com feed show everything as “CLOSED, Not available”?
Because that is what Booking.com puts in every event, including real reservations. It is not a fault at your end. It does mean the feed cannot tell a paid stay apart from a date you closed by hand, which is why bookings imported by iCal arrive as blocked dates with no guest name and no total attached. On a direct connection the reservation arrives as a reservation.
Can Booking.com calendar sync cause a double booking?
On iCal, yes, in two ways. Lag: nothing pushes, so the exposure window is the sum of both platforms’ poll cycles and the same night is genuinely for sale twice during it. And identifier churn: Booking.com regenerates the identifiers on its calendar events when it merges or modifies a block, which can make an importer conclude a booking was deleted and reopen the dates. We have had that happen on our own listing and have built specifically against it.
What do you do about the identifier churn?
Four things. Nothing is cancelled off a single missed poll. A feed that comes back empty, or with under half the events it had last time, has its cancellations dropped outright. Before anything is cancelled, every event in the feed is expanded into individual nights and the booking’s nights are checked for coverage under any identifier at all, if those nights are still busy, it is churn and the booking is left alone. And if dates ever are released, an alert fires within fifteen minutes rather than the release being silent.
What do I have to do inside the Booking.com extranet?
One thing, once. Sign in at admin.booking.com, go to Account, then Connectivity Provider, search for Channex, select Channex.io and accept the XML Service Agreement. Channex is the connectivity platform HostPort runs on, which is why it is that name in the list. It is the only part of setup nobody can do on your behalf.
Can I still use the Booking.com extranet afterwards?
Yes, with one real change. Booking.com hands rates and availability to the connected channel manager and makes those fields read-only: their design, not ours. Content, photos, policies, reviews, finance and guest messaging all keep working in the extranet exactly as before.
Can I run iCal and a direct connection at the same time?
Booking.com does not allow it, and it would be a bad idea if they did, two systems writing to the same calendar is a fight neither wins. When a listing moves to the direct connection, its Booking.com iCal feed steps back to a read-only safety net rather than continuing to write.
I have several identical rooms. Does iCal work for me?
No, and it is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on it. Booking.com limits iCal to properties with 20 room types or fewer and at most one unit per room type. The reason is structural: a calendar event is busy or free, with no way to say “three of ten rooms left”. Multi-unit inventory needs the provider connection.
Will my rates update on Booking.com automatically?
On a direct connection, yes, nightly rates push per date across a 500-day horizon along with the availability, and your derived rate plans on Booking.com keep deriving from the parent rate the way they always have. On iCal, no. iCal carries dates and nothing else, regardless of who is at either end of it.
Which stay restrictions actually reach Booking.com?
Minimum stay on arrival, per date. Maximum stay. Minimum advance booking. And a stop-sell across the horizon when you pause a listing. Closed-to-arrival and closed-to-departure are supported by Booking.com but are not currently pushed per date by us, if your strategy depends on those, that is a genuine gap and we would rather you heard it here.
Do Booking.com guest messages come through?
Yes, on a direct connection. They thread into the same inbox as your Airbnb, Vrbo and direct guests, and replies go back over the same connection. A thread is opened when the booking is confirmed rather than when the guest first writes, so you can send check-in details the moment the reservation lands. On iCal, no messages travel at all.
How fast is it, honestly?
On a direct connection, usually under a minute both ways, because both sides are event-driven rather than polled. The more useful number is the worst case: a sweep every two minutes, the queue and a reconcile against Booking.com every fifteen, and a full resync of every connected listing overnight. So the failure mode is a delay, not a wrong calendar. On free iCal the honest answer is that the schedule is Booking.com’s and we cannot promise one on their behalf.
Does connecting Booking.com cost extra on top of Airbnb?
No. It is $10 AUD per listing per month however many channels that listing is connected to, no per-channel charge, no commission on any booking, no setup fee. Booking.com, Airbnb and Vrbo on one listing is $10, not $30. If you stop paying, the listing falls back to free iCal rather than going dark.
How long does setup take?
The HostPort side is minutes. We will not give you a total, because step one happens in Booking.com’s extranet on Booking.com’s clock, sometimes immediately, sometimes not the same day. Anyone quoting a firm number for a Booking.com connection is quoting one they do not control.
What happens if I stop paying?
The listing falls back to free iCal sync rather than going dark. You lose the speed, the rate pushing and the messaging, you keep a calendar that still updates, and none of your data is held hostage.