You take room bookings on Booking.com or Airbnb and also on your own Wix site. A guest books the last double room on your site at 10:00, and at 11:00 someone books it on Booking.com. That is the double-booking problem, and the usual free fix is iCal calendar sync. It works, but it is slower and more limited than most people expect. Here is how it works and where it stops.

Full disclosure: I built a Wix app for this (it is at the end). The first part works without it.

How iCal sync works

An iCal link is a web address that returns a calendar file (often ending in .ics) listing the booked or blocked nights of one room. No prices, no guest names. Sync needs two links per room, one per direction:

  • Export: each site gives you a link with its own bookings.
  • Import: you paste the other site's link into each site, and that site blocks those nights.

The steps, with the sites' own help pages

  • Booking.com export: extranet > Rates & Availability > Sync calendars > Add calendar connection on the room > Skip to export > name it > Copy link. Each room has its own link. (Booking.com help)
  • Airbnb export: Calendar > Availability > Connect calendars > Connect to another website > copy the link. (Airbnb help)
  • Import into your site: paste each link into whatever runs the booking calendar on your site, one link per room. If a link starts with webcal://, change it to https://.
  • Give your site's link back: in Booking.com, Add calendar connection on the room and paste your site's link. In Airbnb, paste a link ending in .ics under Connect to another website.

Where it stops

It is not instant. Booking.com says it imports every two hours, Airbnb about every three hours, and both say plainly that calendars are not synced in real time and can lead to double bookings. The slowest reader sets your risk: a booking on your site at 10:00 may not close those nights on Airbnb until around 13:00. Buttons like Import now (Booking.com) and Refresh (Airbnb) shorten the wait, but you have to press them.

Booking.com does not offer it to everyone. Its help page lists requirements, including a maximum of 20 room types and one unit per room type. Five identical rooms sold as one room type do not qualify, and Booking.com points those properties to a connectivity provider (a channel manager). Check your extranet for the Sync calendars option before you plan around iCal.

Wix's own hotel product works differently. Wix Hotels by HotelRunner has a one-way Airbnb iCal connection (Wix to Airbnb; Airbnb reservations are entered by hand) and a channel connection for Booking.com. Wix's help pages describe both. Wix Bookings is built for services and classes, not room stays.

Keeping the double-booking window small

  • After a direct booking, press Refresh in Airbnb and Import now in Booking.com.
  • When you are nearly full, block the last dates by hand on each site.
  • Do not chain calendars through Google Calendar; each hop adds a wait.
  • Decide in advance what you do about a rare overlap.

What I built

Full disclosure, I built Hotel & B&B Booking System, a Wix app for small hotels, B&Bs and guesthouses. Each room has its own calendar link with your confirmed direct bookings and blocked nights. You can import Booking.com, Airbnb, VRBO and Google Calendar links per room, and the app reads them about every 15 minutes. Imported nights are not sent back out, so calendars do not echo each other.

The limits remain. Booking.com and Airbnb read your link on their own schedule, so an overlap is still possible in that window, and the dashboard flags it so you can sort it out. iCal carries dates only, not prices. This is not a channel manager and it does not push rates to Booking.com. If you have many rooms or want rates pushed, a channel manager is probably the right tool.

The full guide with the table of update times and an FAQ: How to sync your Booking.com and Airbnb calendar with your Wix website.