iCal connection: the easiest way to share the availability of your accommodation

What is iCal and what it is for

iCalendar (or iCal, in fact) is the universal format used both by many e-mail and calendar programs (including Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple’s iCal), and also by the main online booking platforms (such as OTAs, Airbnb and other vacation rental websites).

iCalendar, iCal or ICS – if we want to use some of the available extensions – is thus a particular file format whose main characteristic is to contain details of events that take place on certain dates. Talking about the management vacation rentals and the hospitality industry in general, the events in question coincide with the bookings .

This format actually, allows you to share the availability of your accommodation with online booking platforms automatically.

But how does the iCal connection work? By sharing a calendar URL with online booking platforms! In fact, the portals access them at regular (and not very frequent) intervals to check and update the availability of each accommodation.

Advantages and disadvantages of an iCal connection

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the update via iCal takes place at not very frequent intervals (in some cases, it may even be limited to a couple of times per day!).

This is due to the technical time required to pass information between the interconnected platforms, which, as it cannot be bypassed or reduced, could become a cause of overbooking,due to the moments when availability is not up to date (if you are not familiar with a word like overbooking read the article about what a channel manager is).

In addition, the information that can be contained in the iCalendar file is limited , and so are the functionalities of this type of connection.

We have in fact only talked about a synchronization of the availability.

This means that rates and content of each singlelistingon a platform like Booking.com or Airbnb, for example, still have to be managed manually (as opposed to two way, XML-based connections like Octorate Channel Manager).

However, it is important to keep in mind that managing a connection made through an iCal file is relatively simple and, if used to link portals that do not provide an excessive volume of bookings and for which little information flow is required, synchronizing your calendar via ical format still allows you to reduce many of the manual tasks involved in updating availability.

We can therefore define the iCal connection as an intermediate step between a manual process and an API connection.

In addition, the iCal format is a valuable alternative that enables you to connect to the Channel Manager all of those portals that are not currently connected via API or XML.

How to create an iCal connection with Octorate

In the detailed information about the single rooms you can find the link to synchronize your calendar with the portal to be linked, and in the same way, you can enter the link provided by the booking portal directly into the Rooms/Apartments section of the Octorate platform!

Frequently Asked Questions

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