How to Find Your Airbnb iCal Link and Sync It with Other Calendars

The short answer

Your Airbnb iCal link is in your listing’s calendar settings: Calendar → Availability → Connect to another website. Airbnb shows you a link ending in .ics. Copy it and paste it into the other platform’s calendar import. Then do the same in reverse, so each calendar can see the other’s booked dates.

The rest of this guide covers each step, what the link carries, and where it falls short.

What is an iCal connection?

iCal (short for iCalendar) is a standard file format for calendar events. An iCal link is a web address that returns a list of your booked or blocked dates. When you give that link to another platform, the platform reads it every so often and blocks the same dates on its side.

Two things follow from that:

It is one-way. A link sends dates out of one calendar. For two platforms to block each other’s dates you need two links, one in each direction.
It is not instant. The receiving platform decides how often to re-read the link. That can be every few hours or as little as once a day.

How to find your Airbnb calendar link

Sign in to Airbnb and open Calendar.
Choose the listing, then open Availability.
Under the calendar connection settings, choose Connect to another website.
Airbnb shows two steps. The first is your Airbnb calendar link. Copy it.
Leave that window open. The second step is where you paste the other platform’s link.

Each listing has its own link. If you have three listings, you repeat this three times.

How to sync Airbnb with VRBO, Booking.com or your own calendar

Syncing means doing the exchange in both directions.

Send Airbnb’s dates out: paste the Airbnb link into the other platform’s calendar import.

VRBO: open the listing’s Calendar, choose Import/Export, and add the Airbnb link as an imported calendar.
Booking.com: in the extranet, go to Rates & Availability → Sync calendars and add a calendar connection. This is available for most single-unit properties.
Google Calendar: choose Other calendars → From URL and paste the link. Apple Calendar and Outlook have the same option under “subscribe”.

Bring the other platform’s dates in: each of those screens also gives you an export link. Copy it, go back to Airbnb’s Connect to another website window, and paste it into the second step with a name you will recognise.

Menu names change from time to time. If a label has moved, look for “sync”, “import” or “export” in the platform’s calendar settings.

What an iCal link does not carry

An iCal link carries dates and very little else.

No guest details and no prices. An Airbnb link shows a date range marked “Reserved” with a reservation reference. A Booking.com link shows only “Not available”.
No reason for a block. The other platform cannot tell a paid booking from a week you closed for repairs.
No cancellations as such. When a booking is cancelled, the dates simply stop appearing the next time the link is read.

So a link is good for blocking dates. It cannot tell you who is arriving, what they paid, or what to put in your books.

Why you can still get a double booking

Because each platform re-reads the link on its own schedule, there is a gap between a booking on one platform and the block appearing on another. In a busy week, a second guest can book the same dates inside that gap.

Chaining platforms makes the gap longer. If Airbnb feeds VRBO and VRBO feeds Booking.com, a new Airbnb booking has to wait for two refreshes before Booking.com sees it. We go through the failure cases in why your iCal sync keeps breaking and your calendar still shows a cancelled booking.

How Airflow handles this

Airflow keeps one calendar per property and sits in the middle, so every platform reads from one place.

Bringing calendars in. In Bookings, pick a property and open Import Bookings → Import from another calendar. Paste the calendar link from Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar and choose Add calendar. Airflow reads each connected calendar about once an hour, and there is a Sync now button when you don’t want to wait.

Dates blocked on the other platform are blocked in Airflow.
An Airbnb reservation is matched to the booking Airflow already holds, by its confirmation code.
Dates Airflow cannot explain go to Needs Attention, where you can add the booking details, mark the dates as your own block, or ignore them.
If a link fails, Airflow leaves your dates blocked. It never frees dates or cancels a booking because a link went quiet.

Sending availability out. In Export Bookings, each property has two links. The private one is for your own Google, Apple or Outlook calendar and shows the booking’s platform, reference, nights and value, with no guest names. The public one shows only “Not available” and is the one to paste into Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO.

Getting the details a link cannot carry. Forward the booking confirmation email, or connect Gmail or Outlook, and Airflow reads the guest, dates, amounts and fees from it. The booking is recorded when the email arrives, with no wait for a calendar refresh.

One limit stays the same: the platforms still re-read Airflow’s link on their own schedule, as they do with any iCal link. Airflow does not push availability into Airbnb or Booking.com through their private connections. If you need that, you need a channel manager, and Airflow can sit alongside one.

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