How do I connect my iCal calendar to sync Airbnb bookings?

iCal is how your booking calendar talks to everything else. It's a plain URL each platform hands you that other tools can read, so your concierge knows who's arriving and when, and double-bookings get caught. It's one-directional and it isn't instant, which is the main thing to understand about it.

Getting the link from Airbnb: open the listing, go to Calendar, then Availability, find "Connect calendars," and hit Export Calendar to copy the URL (it starts with webcal:// and is long and ugly, which is normal). Every platform hides it somewhere similar, VRBO under Calendar then Export, Booking.com under Calendar then Sync calendars, Google Calendar under its import/export settings.

Once your concierge has that link it actually knows the reservation behind each guest, so check-in details go out at the right time, it can check the name messaging you against who's booked before sharing anything sensitive, and an early-check-in question gets answered against the real schedule instead of a guess. Your cleaner can be cued off the same checkout dates.

What trips people up is the sync lag. iCal usually refreshes every 15 to 30 minutes rather than in real time, so a booking you just took won't show the same second. If you run one property across several platforms, connect each one's iCal separately, or use a channel manager to pool them, so a booking on one blocks the dates on the others. After connecting it, make a test booking and check it appears within half an hour before you rely on it.