Booking.com and ÔTA?

[limousin-cottage]

Hi All, I am a bit perplexed this morning, because I logged into my Booking.com listing, to double check all my booking dates are correct. A few days ago I meticulously went through all the remaining available dates for 2018 (which are very few), and made absolutely sure that they were all correct. This morning I logged in again, and to my surprise ALL the remaining 2018 dates in my calendar were closed off and marked ‘closed by OTA’. Who or what are OTA? My only synchronised calendars are Airbnb, Trip Advisor and Booking.com. I have gone through Airbnb this morning, and these dates are marked as available. I haven’t yet checked my Trip Advisor listing. It’s quite possible that I made a mistake the first time I checked my Booking.com calendar, granted. But then why were the dates not closed on my Airbnb listing which is supposed to be synchronised? I am puzzled 😕

[Zingara]

if OTA = On-line Travel Agent does this = booking.com...?

[e-richard]

Do you sync Airbnb TO Booking ?

Check your Airbnb calendar Availability settings > Reservations preferences. Perhaps you have specified that bookings need 2 days notice? Perhaps you have specified a booking window or something like that.

Airbnb use pseudo bookings to block out these sort of dates and these pseudo bookings will be exported as bona fide bookings in the iCal which any iCal reader cannot distinguish from any other bookings. Make sense ? It shouldn't but its true.

[limousin-cottage]

Do you sync Airbnb TO Booking ?

Check your Airbnb calendar Availability settings > Reservations preferences. Perhaps you have specified that bookings need 2 days notice? Perhaps you have specified a booking window or something like that.

Airbnb use pseudo bookings to block out these sort of dates and these pseudo bookings will be exported as bona fide bookings in the iCal which any iCal reader cannot distinguish from any other bookings. Make sense ? It shouldn't but its true.

Yes I do actually. But I checked Airbnb too this morning and the closed dates aren’t closed on Airbnb. I have a 12 hour notice on both sites. So are you saying that the dates could have been closed on Booking.com by Airbnb? Surely not. I will double check my settings as you suggest. But I certainly haven’t closed those dates myself.

[e-richard]

So are you saying that the dates could have been closed on Booking.com by Airbnb? Surely not..

I regret to say that that is EXACTLY what I am saying.

Now, if you want proof, then open the URL from airbnb.
The long bit of code that you pasted into booking.
It looks something like this:
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/calendar/ical/ ... ceee5ac2ec

This is actually a simple text file that is human readable.
Best thing is to paste that long bit of code into your browser address bar (Firefox or Edge, not Chrome) and then if it offers you a choice of how to open it, choose WordPad, not NotePad.

The file contains each and every "booking".
Each booking starts with a line
BEGIN:VEVENT
and ends with a line
END:VEVENT
Bookings are shown as starting on lines marked
DTSTART
and end on lines marked
DTEND

And that is all you need.
Ignore all the other garbage, its all optional and not relevant

Remember this file is rewritten every hour or so, and could change with new data.

Of course, if you do see the same syndrome that I have described (and I have a plethora of examples), then remember its not Airbnb to blame, its your fault or its Booking's fault. This is the official line from Airbnb.

[limousin-cottage]

So are you saying that the dates could have been closed on Booking.com by Airbnb? Surely not..

I regret to say that that is EXACTLY what I am saying.

Now, if you want proof, then open the URL from airbnb.
The long bit of code that you pasted into booking.
It looks something like this:
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/calendar/ical/ ... ceee5ac2ec

This is actually a simple text file that is human readable.
Best thing is to paste that long bit of code into your browser address bar (Firefox or Edge, not Chrome) and then if it offers you a choice of how to open it, choose WordPad, not NotePad.

The file contains each and every "booking".
Each booking starts with a line
BEGIN:VEVENT
and ends with a line
END:VEVENT
Bookings are shown as starting on lines marked
DTSTART
and end on lines marked
DTEND

And that is all you need.
Ignore all the other garbage, its all optional and not relevant

Remember this file is rewritten every hour or so, and could change with new data.

Of course, if you do see the same syndrome that I have described (and I have a plethora of examples), then remember its not Airbnb to blame, its your fault or its Booking's fault. This is the official line from Airbnb.

. Blimey! I want to swear but I can’t. Has anyone else experienced this? Well, curiouser and curiouser. I just logged into Booking.com again and guess what. Now, the dates I changed to available this morning have remained available.BUT all my bookings on my Booking.Com calendar are now showing as booked with Trip Advisor! (Which they clearly are not - they are from a variety of sources)

[e-richard]

Has anyone else experienced this?

Oh yes they have.

The reason I know so much about it is because a number of PIMS users have fallen foul of importing Airbnb iCal files into PIMS, and I have done a lot of investigation and testing - but only using Airbnb imports. I have not done similar testing on the other OTAs - yet!!

This has been reported to Airbnb by a number of people, but we are not allowed to speak to anyone more senior or more knowledgeable than customer support staff, who each have an excellent repertoire of platitudes, but no understanding or solutions.

[limousin-cottage]

Nothing untoward on my Trip Advisor calendar. I am going to try to unsynchronise Air bnb and Booking.com

[Tournesol]

I had something similar happen with B.com; ALL my calendar was marked as closed, both rooms. I don't list with any other agents. Wrote a message to them, then had to retract it as the next time I looked all was back to normal. I assumed just a glitch in their system.

[limousin-cottage]

I had something similar happen with B.com; ALL my calendar was marked as closed, both rooms. I don't list with any other agents. Wrote a message to them, then had to retract it as the next time I looked all was back to normal. I assumed just a glitch in their system.

I am now so paranoid that I have to log in to Booking.com every day to make sure it is correct!