Sometimes you might want to list your property on a specific niche platform or smaller booking channel that doesn't have a direct connection to your NightsBridge system. You still need a way to make sure that external site knows when your rooms are full.
That is exactly where an iCal (which stands for Internet Calendar) link comes in handy. Think of an iCal link as a secure, one-way digital bridge that allows another website to safely peek at your NightsBridge calendar and see your availability.
Here is a quick breakdown of exactly how it works:
Sharing your availability
Instead of a constant, real-time connection, the third-party calendar will use your iCal link to periodically pull your availability from NightsBridge. The frequency of this update depends entirely on the external channel, but they usually only check your link every 3 to 12 hours. This means there is often a slight delay in the availability they display to guests.
Managing your rates
An iCal link is only designed to share your room availability, not your pricing. You will still need to log directly into that third-party website to load or update your rates manually.
Receiving new bookings
Because this digital bridge only goes one way, any bookings made on that external channel will not automatically pull through to your NightsBridge calendar.
As soon as you receive a booking from them, you will simply need to manually capture it in your NightsBridge system.
- This is an important step to ensure the room is blocked out and your availability stays perfectly updated everywhere else.
A quick tip on preventing double bookings:
Because of that 3 to 12-hour delay in updating availability, we highly recommend setting your bookings on these specific iCal channels to 'enquiry only'. This gives you perfect peace of mind and enough time to confirm you still have the inventory before officially accepting the guest's booking!