WordPress Booking Plugin iCal Sync: 4 Plugins Compared

Last updated: June 5, 2026

By the WPRentals team. We build vacation-rental booking software for WordPress and work with short-term-rental operators running multi-channel calendars.

You have a WordPress site, you list on Airbnb and Vrbo, and you need their calendars to talk to each other. So which plugin actually does it?

Among the four plugins evaluated here, WPRentals and MotoPress Hotel Booking are the only two that support true two-way WordPress booking plugin iCal sync with Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. Both can import availability from those channels and export a calendar feed back to them. Bookly and Amelia do not support OTA iCal import at any pricing tier, so neither can block dates from a vacation-rental channel.

The reason is category, not quality. WPRentals is a WordPress theme with a built-in booking engine, MotoPress is a standalone accommodation plugin, and both were designed for nightly stays and OTA sync. Bookly and Amelia are appointment-scheduling plugins built for salons, clinics, and consultants, where an iCal booking calendar means a staff member’s appointments, not a property’s nightly availability.

If you run short-term rentals and want OTA sync, the choice is really between WPRentals and MotoPress.

How iCal Sync Works, and Where It Breaks

One fact shapes everything else here: iCal (the iCalendar format defined in RFC 5545) is a polling protocol, not a push protocol. No WordPress plugin can make iCal “real-time.” That is a property of the format, not a feature any vendor is hiding from you.

Sync over iCal works by subscription. Your site publishes a .ics URL, and the subscribing platform fetches that URL on its own schedule. There is no instant notification. When a booking happens on one platform, every other platform only finds out at its next scheduled pull.

Those pull intervals are documented. Airbnb’s calendar “automatically updates every 3 hours,” per Airbnb’s Help Center. Vrbo states that “calendars sync every 30 minutes.” Booking.com’s partner documentation puts its automatic sync at every 2 hours. So when you sync Airbnb and Vrbo calendars through a WordPress plugin, the slowest pull in the chain sets your real exposure.

iCal also syncs less than people assume. The feed carries the check-in date, the check-out date, and a basic event label. Guest names, pricing, minimum-stay rules, and length-of-stay restrictions are never included. Again, that is the protocol, not the plugin.

Take this scenario, built from the documented intervals above. A guest books “Oceanview Cottage” for June 15 to 20 on Vrbo at 2:00 PM. Vrbo’s 30-minute interval propagates that block to your site by about 2:30 PM. But Airbnb last pulled your export feed at 1:00 PM and will not pull again until 4:00 PM. At 3:00 PM, a second guest instant-books the same dates on Airbnb, confirmed on the spot. The result is a double booking, with cancellation penalties attached.

Not All Booking Plugins Are Competing on the Same Field

Before the comparison, an honest note: these four plugins were not all built for the same job.

WPRentals is a WordPress theme with a built-in vacation-rental booking engine, designed for nightly stays and OTA sync from the start. MotoPress Hotel Booking is a standalone, theme-agnostic accommodation plugin built for hotels, B&Bs, and vacation rentals.

Bookly and Amelia are a different species. They are appointment-scheduling plugins for service businesses, where a “booking” is a timed slot, not a multi-night stay. Their iCal booking calendar features serve a staff member’s personal calendar, and OTA channel sync was never in their scope.

So why include them? Because operators keep finding Bookly and Amelia in “best WordPress booking plugins” roundups and assume the iCal mention covers Airbnb. It does not, and you deserve to know that before you buy.

iCal Sync Comparison: WPRentals, MotoPress, Bookly, Amelia

This matrix lines up all four plugins on the dimensions that matter for WordPress booking plugin iCal sync: sync direction, supported OTAs, poll interval, double-booking handling, and the pricing tier where sync actually unlocks.

Criterion	WPRentals	MotoPress Hotel Booking	Bookly	Amelia
Product category	Theme + booking engine	Accommodation plugin	Appointment scheduling	Appointment scheduling
iCal import from OTAs	Yes	Yes (Pro only)	No	No
iCal export to OTAs	Yes	Yes (Pro only)	One-way staff feed only	One-way email ICS only
True two-way OTA sync	Yes	Yes (Pro only)	No	No
Supported OTAs	Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, HomeAway, any iCal	Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, HomeAway, any iCal	Not applicable	Not applicable
Min. inbound poll interval	~1 hr (tuned) / 3 hr default	15 min (visitor-triggered)	N/A	N/A
Conflict / double-booking block	Yes, imported events block dates immediately	Yes, inventory control automatic; manual sync available	Not applicable	Not applicable
Pricing tier for iCal	$79 one-time (included)	Pro: $139/yr single site	PRO from $49/yr (OTA sync not available at any tier)	Standard from $89/yr (OTA sync not available at any tier)

The takeaway is short. WPRentals and MotoPress Hotel Booking are the only two plugins here with true two-way iCal import and export to OTAs. Bookly and Amelia do not support OTA iCal import at any price tier, which means neither can block dates from an Airbnb or Vrbo reservation.

WPRentals: Full Two-Way iCal Sync Built Into the Theme

WPRentals is the right call for most short-term-rental operators syncing across Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, and it is the strongest pick in this group for an integrated site plus OTA sync. Here is why, with the limitations stated plainly.

Does WPRentals support two-way iCal sync?

Yes. WPRentals supports two-way iCal sync. Per WPRentals’ documentation, each property exports a unique .ics URL that Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com can import, and WPRentals imports individual .ics feeds from each OTA to block availability. Both directions need configuration, and this is a polling mechanism, not a real-time push. You can read the full setup walkthrough for iCal sync in WordPress for the step-by-step version.

Per WPRentals’ documentation, the default inbound interval is about three hours, tunable to roughly one hour using a WP-Cron control plugin. The supported OTA channels include Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, HomeAway, and any iCal-compatible platform. Personal calendar apps like Google Calendar and Outlook can also subscribe to the WPRentals export feed for display, which is a different use case from OTA availability blocking. For a fuller look at WPRentals as a WordPress booking plugin with calendar and payments, the integrated booking engine handles availability and checkout in one place.

One genuinely useful detail for agencies: per WPRentals’ documentation, in a multi-owner marketplace setup each property owner manages their own OTA iCal feeds from the front-end dashboard, with no admin access required. That delegation is rare among booking plugins. As with every iCal tool, the feeds bring only booked date ranges and a simple source tag, so no guest name, price, or restriction data crosses over.

WPRentals is $79 one-time per the ThemeForest listing‘s structured data, and it carries a 4.8 rating from over 600 reviews per that listing. For a one-time price, you get the theme and the OTA sync in a single purchase.

The honest limitation: WPRentals syncs through iCal feeds only, with no direct Airbnb or Booking.com API connection, and its documentation says so. Its default three-hour inbound interval is also slower than MotoPress Hotel Booking’s 15-minute minimum. If you need API-speed propagation across every channel, you will need a dedicated channel manager on top of WPRentals.

MotoPress Hotel Booking: Fastest iCal Interval, Annual Cost

MotoPress Hotel Booking has the fastest configurable poll interval of the four, a real edge worth naming. It also carries one caveat that almost no comparison article discloses.

Does MotoPress Hotel Booking support two-way iCal sync?

Yes, in the Pro version. Per MotoPress’s documentation, the free Lite version on WordPress.org does not include iCal sync at any level. The Pro version supports import from and export to Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and HomeAway. The minimum automatic import interval is 15 minutes, the shortest of any plugin compared here.

That free-versus-paid line matters. Per the plugin’s WordPress.org structured data, MotoPress Hotel Booking Lite has roughly 730,000 cumulative downloads, though its at-a-glance listing shows 10,000+ currently active installs. Operators who install the free version expecting OTA sync will not get it.

MotoPress’s FAQ lists five interval options: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, twice daily, and once daily.

The caveat is buried in MotoPress’s automatic sync documentation: the sync only fires if a visitor is on your site within the configured interval. On a thin-traffic site, that 15-minute setting can quietly stretch to hours, because no visitor means no cron trigger. That is the gap between the advertised interval and the real one.

Two more practical notes from the same FAQ. Booking.com “allows syncing the booking in iCal format only if it meets their Eligibility criteria,” so verify your property in the Booking.com extranet before assuming this works. And when a booking is canceled, it “simply disappears from the iCal file,” so other platforms may not receive a clean cancellation event.

MotoPress prices Pro at $139 per year for a single site, $199 per year for up to 25 sites, and $499 for a lifetime single-site license. It suits operators who already have a theme and want to add accommodation booking.

Bookly: iCal for Staff Scheduling, Not OTA Sync

Bookly does not support OTA iCal sync at any price tier. If you found it in a roundup and assumed otherwise, here is the precise picture.

Can Bookly sync with Airbnb or Vrbo?

No. Bookly’s iCal feature is a one-way staff appointment feed URL, a link that personal calendar apps like Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar can subscribe to in order to display a staff member’s appointments. Per Bookly’s support documentation, “full synchronization is not supported.” There is no mechanism to import availability from Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking.com at any Bookly tier.

Operators tend to conflate two separate Bookly features. The first is the staff iCal feed URL, a read-only output of one staff member’s appointments. The second is the ICS file attached to confirmation emails. Per Bookly’s staff documentation, neither is OTA import or export.

To be fair to Bookly, it does have genuine two-way Google Calendar and Outlook sync, but through their APIs and for appointment scheduling, not OTA availability blocking. For a salon or clinic, that is a strong iCal booking calendar setup. The free base plugin on WordPress.org carries 4.7 stars and 70,000-plus active installs, per its WordPress.org listing, and Bookly PRO starts at $49 per year or $129 lifetime, with Business plans at $199 to $259 per year, per Bookly’s pricing page.

Use Bookly for appointment scheduling. Do not use it for vacation-rental OTA sync.

Amelia: Calendar Output but No OTA Import

Amelia has partial ICS capability and no OTA import at any tier, and its two-way iCal feature has sat on the roadmap as “Planned” for years.

Does Amelia import OTA calendars yet?

No. As of June 2026, Amelia does not support iCal import from OTAs. It can send ICS files in booking confirmation emails and output a one-way Apple Calendar feed on the Standard plan and above, but changes made in Apple Calendar are not reflected back in Amelia. Per Amelia’s public feedback board, two-way iCal calendar sync sits as feature request #24, status “Planned.” Even that request targets personal and employee calendars, not OTA channels.

The Apple Calendar link is output only: Amelia pushes appointments to Apple Calendar but cannot read availability back from it. Google Calendar two-way sync is available on the Standard plan ($89 per year) and above, per Amelia’s pricing, and it is a real capability through the Google API, again for appointment management rather than OTA availability.

The roadmap detail matters if you are evaluating Amelia’s future. That request has been active for three-plus years with merged sub-issues and no release, despite strong user demand.

Per the plugin’s WordPress.org structured data, the free version has roughly 1.43 million cumulative downloads and 770 reviews, and it sits at version 2.4.1, so this is a major appointment-scheduling plugin. Amelia’s paid tiers run Starter $49 per year, Standard $89 per year, Pro $149 per year, and Elite $259 per year, per Amelia’s pricing.

Amelia is a capable appointment-scheduling plugin. For OTA iCal sync it is not viable today, and it has no confirmed release date for that capability.

When iCal Is Not Enough

iCal has a ceiling, and it is worth knowing where it sits. Even at MotoPress’s 15-minute interval, a booking made just after a poll cycle can take up to 15 minutes to register inbound, on top of however long Airbnb or Vrbo takes to pull your export feed (3 hours and 30 minutes respectively).

For operators running 10 or more properties or high booking velocity across several OTAs at once, an API-based channel manager such as Hostaway, Guesty, or Lodgify (named for reference, not reviewed here) provides event-driven push sync that closes the polling window. As Estefania Jaramillo of Rentals United puts it, “iCal checks for updates on a schedule (delayed polling), leaving gaps where double bookings can creep in. API sync is event-driven, it instantly pushes every change.” Worth noting: Rentals United sells channel management, so it has a commercial interest in framing iCal as the weaker option. Channel managers also typically add $50 to $200-plus per month, a real cost for a small portfolio.

Reducing Double-Booking Risk While Using iCal

You can shrink the double-booking window without leaving iCal. None of these eliminate it, but together they cut your exposure meaningfully.

• Shorten the inbound poll interval. WPRentals documents tuning the default three hours down to about one hour with a WP-Cron control plugin. On MotoPress, set 15 minutes in the plugin settings and keep the visitor-trigger caveat in mind.
• Enable minimum advance notice. Require 24 to 48 hours of advance notice so no booking can land inside that window, which gives a sync cycle time to propagate a new block first.
• Insert buffer or prep days. A one-day gap between checkout and the next check-in gives the sync one full polling round to register the departure before new availability opens.
• Manually block dates after an OTA notification. When you get an Airbnb or Vrbo confirmation email, block those dates in your WordPress plugin immediately instead of waiting for automatic sync.
• Test your sync. Block a date on one OTA, wait one full polling cycle, and confirm it shows as blocked on the others. In practice, one test block across all connected OTAs takes about half an hour to confirm your feed URLs and cron schedule are actually working.

One more thing: most OTA calendar imports require an HTTPS feed URL, so make sure your site has a valid SSL certificate before configuring sync.

Key Takeaways

• WPRentals and MotoPress Hotel Booking are the only two plugins in this comparison that support true two-way iCal sync with Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com.
• Airbnb polls iCal feeds every 3 hours, Vrbo every 30 minutes, and Booking.com every 2 hours; these OTA-side intervals create the double-booking window, not the plugin.
• Bookly and Amelia do not support OTA iCal import at any price tier, since their iCal features serve appointment calendars rather than vacation-rental channels.
• MotoPress Hotel Booking’s 15-minute sync interval only fires when a visitor is on the site in that window, a critical caveat for low-traffic properties.
• WPRentals’ iCal integration ($79 one-time) is OTA-polling only with no direct Airbnb or Booking.com API, the honest tradeoff against a dedicated channel manager.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does WordPress support iCal sync with Airbnb?

WordPress itself does not, but certain booking plugins do. WPRentals and MotoPress Hotel Booking (Pro) both support iCal sync with Airbnb. The sync works by exporting a .ics URL from your site that Airbnb imports every 3 hours, per Airbnb’s documentation, and importing Airbnb’s .ics feed back to block those dates. Bookly and Amelia do not support this.

How often does Airbnb update iCal?

Airbnb’s calendar automatically updates every 3 hours, per Airbnb’s official help documentation. You can trigger a manual refresh in Airbnb’s connected calendar settings, but Airbnb rate-limits those manual requests. With a plugin like WPRentals, this 3-hour interval is the main source of double-booking exposure when you sync across multiple platforms at once.

Is the free version of MotoPress Hotel Booking enough for iCal sync?

No. iCal synchronization is a Pro-only feature in MotoPress Hotel Booking, per the vendor’s official FAQ. The free Lite version on WordPress.org, with roughly 730,000 downloads, does not include iCal sync. You need the Pro license, starting at $139 per year for a single site, to get OTA calendar synchronization.

I received a double booking. Why did this happen?

With any iCal-based plugin like WPRentals, double bookings happen because the protocol polls on a schedule rather than in real time. When a guest books on one OTA, the others only learn at their next pull, up to 3 hours for Airbnb and 2 hours for Booking.com. If a second guest books within that window on another platform, both reservations confirm before the block propagates. Booking.com’s partner documentation acknowledges this risk directly.

For short-term-rental operators running Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking.com alongside a WordPress site, WPRentals and MotoPress Hotel Booking are the only viable choices in this group for wordpress booking plugin iCal sync. WPRentals’ iCal is polling-only with a default three-hour inbound interval, slower than MotoPress Hotel Booking’s 15-minute minimum, and it has no direct OTA API. If you run several high-demand properties, test both before you commit.

One product sits just outside this comparison and is worth naming. WP Booking Calendar (wpbookingcalendar.com) is an adjacent plugin that also supports iCal import and export, documented in a separate FAQ on its site. It was outside the scope of these four solutions, so it is not reviewed here. If you are weighing it, check its sync interval and pricing against the plugins above before deciding.

WPRentals ($79 one-time, theme plus booking engine) fits operators who want one integrated site. MotoPress Hotel Booking ($139 per year, plugin-only, faster sync interval) fits operators who already have a theme and want to bolt on accommodation booking. For deeper setup detail, the linked guides above on calendar sync across Airbnb and Vrbo and on iCal sync in WordPress walk through the configuration step by step.

Related guides:

• How to set up iCal sync in WPRentals for Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo
• WordPress booking systems for Airbnb and Vrbo calendar sync
• Choosing a WordPress booking plugin with calendar and payments