CONTENT
Video Tutorial
About Ical Export-Import
The iCalendar Feature is a way to synchronize your listing reservation data with other websites. For example, you published several properties on your WPRentals website but to maximize their exposure you also added them to airbn.com. Now the challenge is to mark as busy (in wprentals site) the dates that are booked on airbnb.com. And vice versa: marked as busy on Airbnb the dates booked on WPRentals sites.
The Icalendar page is not actually a page that you would use to display information for the users. The page you will create will be used only by 3rd party websites (like Airbnb or HomeAway) to read your calendar details.
Note if you access the page directly you would see only an error message. This is ok – this is how it should function. After you created the page you can go to the add property/edit property page and go to the Calendar Section in user dashboard. The export/import options are there.
Create the page for iCalendar feed
You must have 1 page with this custom template Published. You don’t need to access this page in front.The page usually comes with the demo import.
How iCalendar works
Export
The only thing you need to do for exporting a feed in iCalendar format is to create a page in wordpress admin with the template: ICAL FEED . Once that page is generated the link you can find in calendar section becomes active and you can export the booking data into other websites like aibnb.com or homeaway.com.
To export your calendar data you should copy that url (for ex https://wprentals.org/ical-feed-export/?ical=763310533de8d2e03fe564b0693bcc344) and paste it into the 3rd party website. Below is a screen capture with the airbnb import feature. This is where you should post the link and airbnb will read the booking data from your website and synchronize it with the the their version of the listing’.
Note: the iCalendar link will export data in ics format which is non readable by web browsers.
Import
In the calendar section, you need to paste the external feed of the iCalendar. Once you hit save the first synchronization is made and data gets imported. There is also a cron job that will check the feed every 3h hours for the new info. If you want to manually trigger the synchronisation just push save again.
The feed you paste in there is created by other 3rd party websites. In the image below you see the feed from airbnb.com
The external booking data will appear in the calendar page with a special purple label (bookings made on your website will be in the green label). It would show either the external source (like Airbnb) or external (in cases like Homeaway – because they don’t add the name in the UID parameter in iCalendar feed).
Go to My Listings -> Edit Listing -> Calendar -> Scroll to Ical feed -> add ical feed name, ical feed URL – > click Add New feed -> Click Save
Import multiple feeds
Repeat the process to add Ical Feed Name -> Ical URL -> Click add New field for every ical you wish to add.
You to add feeds from multiple platforms (like Airbnb,HomeAway etc at the same time).
How to get to the Calendar Tab:
Even as single owner or site admin, you must use the front end dashboard to manage the listings ical feed.
Go to Owner dashboard -> My Listings
From here go to My Listings -> Edit Listing
The listing must be published!
And then add the ical feed(s) in the Calendar Tab:
How to import hourly bookings using ICalendar
Get the Ical url from a platform that has option to add hourly bookings and add it to Calendar Tab.
IMPORTANT
When have hourly booking setup for listings
- The calendar is not displayed in front end submit – Calendar page. You add the ical, save it and check the availability calendar with the imported hours on the listing page.
- For a listing to not be displayed in search results when making a search after a certain date it must have booked the entire day that is mandatory to start with hour 1 and end to hour 23:
ICalendar Feed Cron – Change To A Different Recurrence Time
- Install WP Control plugin
- Edit ICAL CRON
The cron job that checks for new feed data is in events.php in function setup_event_wp_estate_sync_ical.
Related Help Articles
How to make the calendar un-available – https://help.wprentals.org/article/how-to-make-calendar-and-booking-unavailable/
How to add manual bookings – https://help.wprentals.org/article/adddelete-booked-periods-as-owner/
How to set hourly booking – https://help.wprentals.org/article/how-to-setup-hourly-booking/