# Merged block

Source: https://lemon.cy/glossary/merged-block/  
Publisher: Lemon.cy (Red Tribe Media Ltd, Limassol, Cyprus)  
Updated: 2026-09-10 · Verified against production: 2026-09-10

**Short answer:** One iCal event covering two or more real stays that sit back to back, exported by Booking.com as a single contiguous "CLOSED - Not available" range under one UID. The middle checkout disappears from the feed; if the block exceeds 30 nights it can also be mistaken for an owner closure.

A merged block is a reshape with a specific danger: it hides a checkout, and the checkout is where the clean happens. Lemon handles it with three guards. A tracked booking's own UID is never allowed to widen over another stay; a normal-length tracked reservation whose block balloons past the 30-night owner-closure threshold is routed to the reshape guard instead of being skipped; and nights inside the block that no tracked booking explains are surfaced to the host as uncovered nights under a stable synthetic identifier keyed on the block's checkout.

The incident that produced the third guard (INC-5, September 2026) was a 5-night stay and a 30-night stay exported as one 35-night block.

## Related

- [Reshape](https://lemon.cy/glossary/reshape/)
- [Supersede](https://lemon.cy/glossary/supersede/)
- [Uncovered nights](https://lemon.cy/glossary/uncovered-nights/)
- [Why do two back-to-back Booking.com reservations show as one long block in iCal?](https://lemon.cy/learn/merged-block-back-to-back-bookings-one-event/)