Setting it up
- In the Booking.com extranet: Rates & Availability → Sync calendars → Export calendar. Copy the
.icslink (it must end in.ics). - In Lemon: Properties → the property → add iCal feed → paste. Lemon detects Booking.com from the link.
- First sync immediately, then every 5 minutes.
What Booking.com's feed carries, and does not
One summary for everything: CLOSED - Not available. No guest name, no reservation number, no status. A UID that changes when the surrounding availability changes shape. An in-progress stay re-exported daily with its elapsed nights removed. Two back-to-back stays sometimes exported as one block.
What Lemon does about each
| Behaviour | Lemon's handling | Decision logged |
|---|---|---|
| Nameless block | Treated as a reservation; job created | — |
| Block > 30 nights | Owner closure; skipped | skip_owner_block |
| Stay > 90 nights even with a name | Held for host review | — |
| UID changes, same checkout | Re-linked to the existing booking | rekey_adopted |
| Check-in walks forward during the stay | Original check-in pinned | elapsed_checkin_pinned |
| Block widens over a tracked stay | Widen refused; unexplained nights surfaced | uncovered_surfaced |
| Block later splits into real stays | Placeholder promoted onto the real event | synthetic_promoted |
| Stay vanishes | Flagged; window 24h / 2h / never within 24h of checkout | auto_cancelled or imminent_protected |
Numbers
In the 30 days to 2026-09-10 across 9 Booking.com and 9 Airbnb feeds: 78 re-keys, 1,240 forward-trim pins, 10 auto-cancellations. Lifetime, Booking.com feeds withdrew 2.4× as many calendar events as Airbnb feeds. Source: feed integrity report.
When to go beyond iCal
If you run back-to-back Booking.com stays or monthly stays, connect a PMS (Hospitable, Guesty, Hostaway) so reservations arrive as objects with names and statuses. Lemon deactivates the property's iCal feeds automatically when you do.