How to setup iCAL synchronization with third parties?

Our Houses of Europe platform enables landlords to sync their listing with other third parties such as Airbnb or Booking.com. Every other platform can be synced as long as the other platform accepts an iCAL feed synchronization. This instruction manual provides you with the easy steps on how to connect insert the iCAL feed from any third party into the Houses of Europe platform but also shows you how to retrieve your unique iCAL feed to insert into the third party platform such as Booking.com.

We start at the “My Listing” page. On this page you should see all your active listings. Each of these listings contain the iCAL button on the end of the row as shown below.

When you click on the iCAL URL button it shows two options. The first option is “iCAL Export” and the second option is “iCAL import” as displayed on the right.

How to export my booking dates?

At first we are going to setup the Export option. With this option the Houses of Europe platform creates a unique iCAL feed which enables other platforms to check the availability of your listing.

For instance, when your listing has been booked via our platform then it will show-up in the iCAL feed. However, if your listing is blocked manually it is not visible in the iCAL feed, thus it won’t be synchronized to the other platforms. Also, the Houses of Europe platform is not functioning as an third party connector. So that means if you have multiple platforms, each platform should be connected to the other and can not be connected using only the Houses of Europe platform.

After pressing the “iCAL Export” button a popup appears showing you the unique URL which you can fill in on the third party platform. This URL enables the third party platform to retrieve all the booking dates from your listing in a 30 minute interval.

How to import booking dates from other websites?

Besides the export functionality we also enabled the import options so that when you receive a booking on the website of a third party that booking period for instance the check-in date, the check-out date and the days in between, will be marked as unavailable on our platform.

The Houses of Europe platform checks each 30 minutes if there are bookings in the iCAL feed. If the system locates a booking then it will store the data directly into the database and mark those dates as unavailable. You will not be able to see those bookings on the Approved Bookings page. However, you can see them in the My Bookings page where it will show as “External

When you click on the iCAL URL button it shows two options. The first option is “iCAL Export” and previously discussed. The second option which we are going to use now is the “iCAL import” as displayed on the right.

After clicking on the import option the popup comes up again and asks for two fields. A name and a URL.

If you want to import for instance the booking.com iCAL feed. You can fill in Booking.com in the name field and the provided iCAL URL, which you have received from them, in the URL field. If you want to overrule the Houses of Europe platform in case of conflicting dates. You can enable to “Force Update conflicting ical events” option. That overrides all conflicting dates if there are any.

After pressing the save button the system automatically tries to retrieve the iCAL file and check if there are already some bookings which can be imported. The iCAL Import popup now changes and shows the currently created import, the option to import more iCAL feeds and also the success message that there have been bookings to import as shown below.

From this popup you can manually import the feeds once or remove active feeds if you are not using them anymore.

Frequently Asked Questions about the iCAL Sync

What happens when I remove a feed?

When you decide to remove the feed from your listing, the system automatically removes all the imported dates which that feed provided. This action can not be undone. So please be careful.

Can I change the 30 minutes interval?

At this moment it is not possible to change the interval of 30 minutes.

What happens when a duplicate booking has been made in the 30 minutes?

If it happens that someone is booking the same dates or overlapping dates you you have to cancel 1 of the bookings manually, preferably from the third party as they charge commissions and we do not.