What are iCal feeds? And what can I do with them.

iCalendar (often shortened to iCal) is a universal format for exchanging calendar information. An iCal feed is essentially a link (URL) to a calendar that other applications can subscribe to. When the original calendar is updated (e.g., a new booking is made, or availability changes), any service subscribed to its iCal feed will also see those changes. It’s a way to keep availability and bookings synchronized across different platforms without manual updates.

How can you use iCal feeds in Camping.care?

In Camping.care, you can use iCal feeds primarily to import and export availability and bookings from other external calendars into our system. You can find and manage the iCal links here: https://app.camping.care/settings/channel-manager/icals

Export

Share your accommodation availability with site’s like booking.com. Copy the iCal link and share it with any calendar you wish. We have 2 different links.

One link that includes only if an accommodation is available or not in a certain period of time. This is the total / accumulated, stock of all objects / places per accommodation.

The second link contains all the reservations made in this accommodation. This can be used if you are importing all your reservations into an other system.

Import

You can also import reservations from other platforms. Like AirBNB, Booking.com and Natuurhuisje.nl. Reservations from these platforms are imported 4 times a day. In our platform they will appear as blockages.

Pros

• Easy to implement
• No additional costs
• Most platforms support this

Cons

• Data is limited, reservations don’t contain info about costs or contact data.
• iCals are not realtime, it can take up to hours to sync data.
• The is still the possibility to get double bookings.

Alternatives

iCal is a basic solution. If you want realtime connections and also want to receive contact data? Then we have a lot of direct connections via our channel manager.