Existing Owners' Page
Information, hints and tips for existing owners on the Kalkan Secrets website
RATES
Owners can enter their 2024/25 rates here:
Owners can submit new photos and/or new details for us to upload here:
An explanation of iCal and syncing your other calendars with Kalkan Secrets
What is iCal?
iCalendar, often referred to as iCal, is a standard internet calendar format that enables users to create and share electronic calendars across different computers and different programs. Originally conceived as an interchange for personal calendars such as Apple's iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, Google Calendar, Yahoo! calendar and Microsoft Outlook, the standard is also used by some rental Listing sites to enable remote updating.
How the Kalkan Secrets calendar interacts with other sites
The KS calendar can either EXPORT to various listing sites in order to update their calendars to reflect bookings that have been recorded in KS, or KS can IMPORT booked dates that may have been recorded in any other 3rd party websites, and then your KS database is updated to reflect these external bookings. Whether it's importing or exporting, the iCal synchronisation process is a delayed process, and not instantaneous. KS calendar will run its export every hour on the hour, and will import every hour on the half hour. Each 3rd party site will have its own schedule.
Important - compulsory for all Kalkan Secrets listings from 1st January 2021
Where a booking may be initiated on a remote site AND where that remote site can itself export iCal files, then KS can read (import) iCal files and update the KS database.
The process for importing is similar to exporting, but of course, in reverse.
Important notes for importing:
- A typical iCal record only contains 3 items:- Start date, End date and Booking name, So KS has to make a number of assumptions when importing each record.
- Each record is assumed to be a Confirmed booking
- If the start and end dates do not conflict with any existing bookings, then we import the new record and mark it in our system as an iCal import.
- If the start and end dates EXACTLY match an existing booking in KS, then we assume its simply a repeat of a previously included booking, and we just ignore it.
- If the dates on the imported record overlap in any other way, then we record this as an ERROR and will need to take remedial action
Holiday/Vacation Rental Listing Sites
Below is a partial list of some listing sites that support iCal import. This is not an exhaustive list. More are appearing all the time; just because it's not on the list here, does not mean that it will not work with the KS iCal import.
Please check the documentation at your chosen listing site for information on how to export your iCal (.ics) file.
Kalkan Private Rentals (our sister site): Subscribers can use their KPR calendar as their "master" and we will import the iCal feed from that to their Kalkan Secrets listing, unless we are told otherwise.
Other sites:
- Airbnb
- FlipKey
- TripAdvisor/HolidayLettings and offshoots
- VRBO/HomeAway and offshoots
- letaway.com
- OwnerHolidays
- Wimdu
- voya.ge
- theholidaylet.com
- TravelNest
- Rentals United
+ Others being added all the time
And, of course, Google Calendar, Yahoo or Outlook.
Both Outlook and Google calendars support the iCal format. It’s a file format that has been used since the late 1990s. Without having to get all sorts of technical, this allows you to exchange calendar and scheduling information between two different platforms.
For example... how to export your Outlook calendar? You can do this by subscribing to a link.
The first step is to get the link for your Outlook calendar. So, log into your Office 365 account and open the app launcher — those nine dots in the upper left corner.
When opened, you’ll need to do the following:
- Select Outlook and click on Settings
- Open Calendars > Shared Calendars
- Choose the calendar you want to share in the “Publish a calendar” section.
- Select “Can view all details” in the second dropdown, and click “Publish.”
Two links should now appear: an HTML link and an ICS link (which looks like a website address but ends in .ics). With the HTML link, other people can view your calendar. The ICS link, however, will let us import your calendar into our calendar program.
If you click the ICS link, a new menu will appear. Go ahead and select the “Copy link” option. You can now copy that link to your clipboard.
Then paste that link into an email and send it to us. We will do the rest!
So:
To IMPORT an external iCal calendar into your KS calendar, all you need to do is email us the .ics file code you get from your sourcing calendar.
