Booking portal sync done for you: full service

With SFERIN, connecting your website to Booking.com, megaubytovanie.sk, hauzi.sk and other portals is our job, not yours. While we prepare your website we need three things from you: the list of portals where you list the property, access to their accounts or the links to their calendars, and your price list with the minimum stay. We connect the calendars both ways, verify before launch that availability matches, and keep an eye on the sync after launch. You don’t have to look for any iCal links or set anything up. The connection is included in the website with a booking system from €249, however many portals you use.

What we need from you

The whole connection rests on three inputs. Everything else is our work.

1. The list of portals where you list the property. Booking.com, megaubytovanie.sk, hauzi.sk and any other portal that offers an iCal calendar. The portal name and a link to your listing are enough.
2. Access to your portal accounts or their iCal links. The simplest way is to give us access to the portal’s admin area. We then find the calendar links ourselves and paste our calendar in the right place. If you prefer not to share access, send us the iCal link from each portal and we send you the link you paste into the portal yourself. We show you exactly where.
3. Your price list and minimum stay. Seasons, nightly prices, weekday prices and the minimum number of nights. The website uses them to calculate the price for every date and to decide which dates can be booked.

If you are not sure where to find something in a portal, you don’t need to work it out. That is exactly why we do it.

What we do

Once we have the inputs, the connection takes five steps. You don’t need to be at your computer for any of them.

• We add the portal calendars to your website. Each portal gets its own calendar inside your website. Dates booked on the portals show on the website as unavailable.
• We add your website calendar to each portal. The portal reads confirmed bookings from your website and stops offering those dates.
• We verify availability both ways. Before launch we compare the calendar on the website with the calendars on the portals. We launch only when the booked days match everywhere.
• We set the interval and error monitoring. Our server reads the portal calendars automatically every five minutes. Every run is recorded in the sync log in your website admin, so you can see when and what was read and whether anything failed.
• We check the sync after launch. If a portal changes its link or stops responding, we see it in the log and sort it out with you before it turns into a double booking.

When you add another portal later, send us the link to its calendar or access to the account and we add it. Nothing extra to pay.

How it works technically, in plain terms

Portals and your website exchange booked dates through the iCal format. Every portal has a calendar link for your property and can in turn read a link to another calendar. Booking.com’s help pages for partners state that calendar sync uses iCal links to import and export booked or closed dates between Booking.com and other platforms, that it is not in real time, and that connected calendars are imported automatically every two hours.

In practice this means two things:

• From the portals to the website: when a guest books on any connected portal, our server picks it up within five minutes at most and the dates show as booked on the website.
• From the website to the portals: when you confirm a request from the website, the dates are written to the calendar shared with the portals. The portal reads it at its own interval; Booking.com says within two hours.

We send the portals only what you have confirmed, plus the manual blocks you enter in the admin. A pending request from the website does not block the dates on the portals. The full booking flow is described on the booking system page.

The portal calendar links are stored encrypted on our server, and the website admin uses two-factor sign-in. The portal access you give us is used only to set up the connection.

What iCal can’t do

The iCal format transfers only booked and closed dates. Nothing more. That leads to three limitations worth knowing in advance:

• Guest messages from Booking.com or another portal don’t reach the website. You keep replying to portal guests in the portal’s app. Requests from your own website reach you by email.
• Prices are not transferred via iCal. You manage the portal price list in the portal and the website price list in the website admin.
• The delay is set by the portal, not by us. It can take a while before a portal reads your website calendar, up to two hours with Booking.com, for example.

If you need messages and prices to transfer as well, we can arrange a channel manager connection individually on request. For most cottages and apartments, however, the calendar sync that is included is enough.

What we do when something goes wrong

The most common worry among owners is a double booking. It happens when two guests book the same dates in two places before the calendars have had time to sync. How to narrow that window with the right booking settings on your website is covered in Double bookings from a portal and your website.

When something doesn’t match, this is what we do:

1. We check the sync log in the admin. For every run you can see which portal was read, how many dates it brought and whether it ended in an error.
2. We check the links. Portals occasionally change a calendar link or switch the calendar off. In that case we renew the link.
3. We check the settings in the portal. Booking.com, for example, only allows calendar sync for properties that don’t use a connectivity provider, and it shows the connection status directly in the extranet.
4. If needed, we align the availability manually and set it up again.

You hear about the problem from us, not from a guest standing at the door.

What it costs

Calendar sync with the portals is part of the website with a booking system from €249. That applies to any number of portals, including the ones you add later. You pay no commission to anyone on direct bookings from your website, and you can keep the portals for new guests. To see what it means for your numbers, use the commission calculator and the overview on the channel sync page.

How to start

Send us the name of your property and a link to your listing or website. We prepare a free website preview and agree with you which portals to connect. We ask for access and the price list only once you decide to go ahead with the website.