Solving the ‘blocked dates’ issue between Airbnb and Booking.com synchronization
Did you know that when synchronising your Stay calendars between Booking.com and Airbnb that not all blocked dates are synchronised?
One of our Stays had this recently when we booked their property for open dates according to their Airbnb calendar, only to find they could not deliver on the booking.
The detail is listed in this Airbnb Help Center article:
Sync your Airbnb calendar to other websites
Why does Nomad Stays care?
We drag your availability calendar from your master calendar to ensure we don’t take duoble bookings.
As the Stay in the example above had given us their Airbnb ical calendar link as their ‘master calendar’ we were not receiving all the blocked and booked dates that they’d entered into their Booking.com calendar.
‘blocked’ dates are handled differently to ‘booking’ dates on Airbnb
The problem as is outlined by Airbnb is that when you’ve ‘blocked‘ dates on your booking.com calendar these particular dates are not always recognised by Airbnb. Meaning your Airbnb calendar is only showing partial information making the chances of overbooking and unhappy customers much higher.
Let alone running the risk of being delisted from platforms for not honoring their bookings.
Using a Channel Manager is the Solution
Channel Manager is the term used by a group of technology providers who provide a critical role in the online accommodation industry.
Channel Managers synchronise all blocked and bookings and often your rates between your different platforms.
Rather than using the inbuilt functions of a sales platforms (whose primary interest is making a booking rather than offering full synchronisation technoloy services) a Channel Manager is a pure technology provider. Their job is to ensure proper synchronisation between all your platforms.
The price of Channel Managers varies as does their services but you can find Channel Managers from as low as $10 a month. A small price to pay to avoid missed bookings, unhappy clients and delisting from platforms for dishonored bookings.
