# What does "CLOSED - Not available" mean in a Booking.com iCal feed?

Source: https://lemon.cy/learn/what-does-closed-not-available-mean-booking-com-ical/  
Publisher: Lemon.cy (Red Tribe Media Ltd, Limassol, Cyprus)  
Updated: 2026-09-10 · Verified against production: 2026-09-10

**Short answer:** Nothing specific. Booking.com exports every unavailable night the same way — a confirmed guest reservation, a block you set yourself, and an availability closure all appear as one event titled "CLOSED - Not available" with dates and a UID. Any tool reading the feed has to infer which one it is.

## The one label Booking.com gives you

Open a Booking.com `.ics` export and every event looks like this: a `SUMMARY` of `CLOSED - Not available`, a `DTSTART`, a `DTEND`, and a `UID`. There is no guest name, no reservation number, no status, and no distinction between a paying guest and a night you closed yourself. Airbnb's export is slightly richer — it says "Reserved" for guest stays and "Airbnb (Not available)" for blocks — but Booking.com's is not.

For a cleaning schedule this is the central problem. A checkout on a real reservation needs a cleaner. A block you set for painting does not. The feed cannot tell them apart, so the software has to.

## How Lemon separates them

Lemon treats a Booking.com generic block as a reservation by default, because the cost of missing a real checkout (a guest walks into a dirty flat) is far higher than the cost of a cleaner visiting an empty one. On top of that it applies duration and shape rules:

| Signal | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Block longer than 30 nights, no guest name | Owner closure — skipped, no job |
| Block longer than 90 nights, even with a name | Held for host review, never auto-confirmed |
| Block that widens to swallow a stay Lemon already tracks | Merged block — the tracked stay keeps its job; extra nights are surfaced as a question |
| Short block (up to 3 nights) adjacent to an owner closure | Split tail of the closure — skipped |
| Everything else | A reservation with a checkout cleaning |

When the rules cannot decide, the booking goes to a `pending_review` state on the host dashboard instead of an automatic action. The host answers "real stay" or "not a stay" once.

## Why this cannot be fully solved from the feed

Booking.com's export is byte-identical for a host-set closure and a guest booking. Lemon documents this as a fundamental ambiguity rather than a bug: the only way to know for certain is a direct connection to the property management system, which carries the reservation object itself. That is why Lemon supports both iCal and direct connections to Hospitable, Guesty and Hostaway.

## Related

- [Can cleaning software tell a host-blocked date from a guest booking on Booking.com?](https://lemon.cy/learn/host-block-vs-guest-booking-booking-com-ical/)
- [Why does Booking.com change the UID of an existing reservation in its iCal feed?](https://lemon.cy/learn/booking-com-ical-changes-uid-rekey/)
- [Merged block](https://lemon.cy/glossary/merged-block/)
- [iCal or a direct PMS connection — which is better for cleaning automation?](https://lemon.cy/learn/ical-vs-direct-pms-connection-for-cleaning-automation/)