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What iCal sync does

Checkinea can watch a listing's calendar export from Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo and automatically detect new stays — you don't have to enter them by hand. Because an iCal feed only carries dates and a booking reference, never guest names or contact details, a stay that arrives this way shows up as a "booking candidate" first. You confirm it and add the missing guest details before Checkinea can file it with SES. Read more in Booking candidates.

Where to find your calendar export link

Menus move around on OTA sites from time to time, so treat these as a starting point rather than exact, permanent steps.

Airbnb

  1. Go to Calendar.
  2. Open Availability settings.
  3. Find Connect to another website (calendar sync) and copy the export link shown there.

Booking.com

  1. Log in to the extranet.
  2. Go to Rates & Availability.
  3. Open Sync calendars and copy the export calendar link.

Vrbo

  1. Go to Calendar.
  2. Open Import & Export.
  3. Choose Export calendar and copy the link.

Every one of these links ends in .ics and is private to your listing — anyone with the link can see your booked dates, so treat it like a password and don't share it publicly.

Connecting it in Checkinea

  1. Open the property, then go to its Channels tab.
  2. Open Connect a channel.
  3. Pick the Channel (Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo) and paste the export link into the iCal link field.
  4. Press Connect. Checkinea checks the feed right away and reports whether it found any bookings.

How often Checkinea checks the feed

After the first check, Checkinea polls each connected feed every 30 minutes. If a stay is removed from the OTA calendar before check-in, Checkinea treats it as cancelled the next time it polls that feed — this only affects future stays from that connection; stays that have already passed are left alone.

Troubleshooting

The link isn't accepted. Make sure you copied the calendar export link (it ends in .ics), not the public URL of your listing page — those look similar but only the export link works.

No bookings are appearing. Give it a few minutes for the first sync, and up to 30 minutes for anything added afterwards. Check the channel's status badge in the Channels tab — an error badge means the feed URL is no longer valid and needs to be reconnected.