HOW TO USE ICAL EFFECTIVELY HOW TO
HOW TO USE ICAL EFFECTIVELY MANUAL
HOW TO USE ICAL EFFECTIVELY SOFTWARE

I needed an asset for our new splash page, and I couldn’t find it in our Dropbox. While Joseph is new to the MyVR team, he is passionate about the short-term rental industry and helping property managers grow their businesses.I peeked over my stand-up desk to see what Eunice, our Designer, was up to. MyVR's SEO analyst and regular blog contributor.

HOW TO USE ICAL EFFECTIVELY SOFTWARE

To maintain your reservation calendar’s fidelity, consider property management software with direct connections to every channel.

HOW TO USE ICAL EFFECTIVELY MANUAL

Manual and iCal syncing will only leave you with more problems. Our centralized reservation calendar consolidates each channel’s calendar to make it easy for you to see upcoming reservations and prevent double bookings. MyVR offers direct connections to HomeAway, Vrbo and the four other major channels and their 70+ affiliates, so you’ll never have to worry about double bookings again. Direct connections allow property managers to run their business at maximum efficiency by automatically blocking off your property’s availability in every channel after a booking is confirmed. The best option to centralize your HomeAway and Vrbo calendars is to use property management software with direct connections that can manage the job for you.ĭirect connections unite your HomeAway and Vrbo listings with your property management software without manual calendar syncing or an error-prone channel manager in the middle. Centralize your reservation calendar with direct connections While it might be an app that you use in your day-to-day personal life, it's a tool you should avoid when money is on the table. The limited functionality of iCal puts you at risk of double bookings, limits your ability to collect data, and excludes booking details. Some managers opt to sync iCal with their HomeAway or Vrbo account, but this is problematic as iCal was not intended for the complexities of the short-term rental industry.įor this reason, we discourage any property manager or owner from using this method of calendar syncing. ICal is short for iCalendar, a default calendar application used to sync and store scheduling information.

HOW TO USE ICAL EFFECTIVELY HOW TO

How to sync your booking calendar with HomeAway and Vrbo

The other two options to choose from for calendar management are iCalendar sync and automated syncing with property management software. This can hurt your ranking, your business and your reputation. As you might expect, this is an annoying and time consuming process that will likely result in errors. Manual syncing means that when you have a booking from one channel, you have to go into your other channels’ accounts and mark the dates off by hand. In choosing to manually sync your booking calendar, you’re opening your vacation rental business up to a number of potential risks, not to mention, creating unnecessary work for yourself. However, you’ll discover that manual syncing and iCal are both unreliable and end up creating more work than they’re worth. Technically, you can manage your reservation calendar three ways: manually, via iCal calendar syncing or through a centralized booking calendar populated through property management software (PMS). So how do you centralize your reservation calendar while avoiding errors at the same time? While a diversified channel management strategy will boost your revenue significantly, it becomes much more difficult to manage your booking calendar by hand or with iCal, as your risk of double bookings increases exponentially. To spark your rental business's growth, you should list your properties across the five major channels, including HomeAway and Vrbo, in order to increase your revenue and occupancy rates quickly. As a short-term property manager, are you confident that you aren’t leaving yourself vulnerable to double bookings? One of those mistakes is using manual syncing or iCal to sync your booking calendar across channels.ĭouble bookings are the kryptnite to any vacation rental business's growth.

In the vacation rental industry, there are some mistakes that can be more detrimental to your business than others.

How to use ical effectively