Lay My Hat

So for sometime now the HomeAway iCal import link only works sometimes, and when it does work it takes hours before the HA calendar is imported. I've been chasing my tail trying to get HA support to respond sensibly to my support requests. Today I got an email which stated this :

"In regards to your question, I do see that their is a calendar in place for another website. I see from the URL link for this calendar that you have added that the calendar is an ical link. Many common programs, such as Google Calendar, iCal, are designed to allow users to enter a variety of events, personal and otherwise, that are not necessarily meant to block availability in order for a guest to book. The data is fed in such a way that there is no way of distinguishing the difference between a personal appointment and a reservation. This would be the reason that when travellers try to book via the home away site that the dates are available, even though in the other calendar you have they are not."

What poppycock ..... HA always imported and blocked in the past, still does occasionally and after long time lag.

Anybody else got problems with HA iCal import?

I use Ical for HA. I have had problems in the past, I thought they had been ironed out... .

Having an unreliable ical update is worse than not having one at all.

In fact I always double check all my (instant booking) sites after a booking to makes sure there are no errors....so I don t really trust them at all.

I found problems a number of times .. dates blocked one day early..
Reported issue but problem kept recurring. Now updating manually.
Will not be renewing in10 months time.

rosebud wrote:I found problems a number of times .. dates blocked one day early...

This is a common problem from some other listing sites (e.g. Airbnb), so it helps to know which source you are importing into HA.

As an example, the day after or day before blackout results from you making a setting at source iCal site where you define the number of days before a holiday that a booking may be made. So if you require 2 days notice, then Airbnb will block out the prior 2 days and will mark it as booked on your exported iCal.

As far as the export from HA is concerned, its has been known to be iffy and runs at unreliable intervals.

There is really little excuse for any of the above. iCal is a remarkably simple calendar interchange and marking dates as booked for holidays is the most simple form of simple you can get.