Glossary/Re-key

Glossary · OTA calendar behaviour

Re-key

Definition

When an OTA's iCal feed stops exporting a stay under one UID and exports the same nights under a new UID. Common on Booking.com. To software keyed on the UID it looks like a cancellation followed by a new booking; Lemon re-links the stay by its checkout instead.

Also called: UID change, re-keyed reservation

Term defined by Lemon.cy · verified 2026-09-10 · Markdown

The iCal standard treats UID as a permanent identifier for an event. Booking.com's export does not, because what it exports is the set of unavailable nights, not reservations; when that set changes shape, the events describing it may be regenerated with fresh identifiers. Airbnb re-keys far less often but is not immune.

Lemon's rule 1: identity is (property, feed, checkout date), never the UID. When a tracked UID is absent from a healthy feed and the same checkout is present under a different, unclaimed UID, the new UID is adopted onto the existing booking and a rekey_adopted decision is logged. The cleaning job and its cleaner are untouched.

In the 30 days to 2026-09-10, 78 re-keys were adopted across 18 feeds — about 4.3 per feed per month.

Cite this page. Lemon.cy (2026). "Re-key". Verified against production on 2026-09-10. https://lemon.cy/glossary/re-key/