Connect Hipcamp to Campiamo

Hipcamp — which also powers Cool Camping listings — exchanges calendars with Campiamo using iCal. Each side publishes a calendar link and reads the other's on a schedule: a Hipcamp booking blocks the dates in Campiamo (and on your website, widget and other channels), and your Campiamo bookings block the dates on Hipcamp.

If calendar sync is new to you, read how channel sync works first.

Before you start: pools of identical pitches

Calendar sync carries no numbers — a date is busy or free, never "14 of 20 pitches left". Campiamo makes the most of that: a Hipcamp stay blocks one pitch of the type you link, and Campiamo marks a date busy on Hipcamp only when the whole pitch type is full, so a 50-pitch field keeps selling on Hipcamp until the last pitch goes.

What Hipcamp cannot learn is how many are left. It sells from the number of sites on its own listing, and only stops when it next reads your calendar after the last pitch went. Keep that number small next to the field — five sites on a 50-pitch field, say — and the most that can be sold in that gap is small too. A single space — a hut, a bell tent, a named hardstanding — is exact: give it its own listing and one-unit pitch type. The trade-offs are spelled out in the Booking.com guide's unit-count section, which applies here word for word.

Step 1: Create the connection in Campiamo

1. Go to Channels in the dashboard sidebar.
2. Find Hipcamp and choose Connect.
3. Pick the pitch type this listing corresponds to.

Keep the dialog open while you fetch the Hipcamp link.

Step 2: Copy your Hipcamp calendar link

In your Hipcamp host dashboard:

1. Open the listing's Availability / Calendar settings.
2. Choose Sync calendars.
3. Copy the export link — it usually ends in .ics, sometimes followed by a long code that is part of the link.

Step 3: Finish the connection in Campiamo

Paste the link into the Calendar link from Hipcamp field and save. Campiamo validates it immediately — a signed-in page or a broken link is refused with an explanation rather than accepted and left to fail quietly.

Hipcamp wants your Campiamo link first? Leave the link field empty and connect anyway. Your Campiamo link appears straight away, and you add theirs later with Add their link on the Channels page (which link goes first).

Once saved, Campiamo shows your calendar link. Copy it.

Step 4: Import your Campiamo calendar into Hipcamp

Back on the same Sync calendars screen in Hipcamp, choose to import a calendar, paste your Campiamo link, and name it "Campiamo". Both directions are now connected.

What syncs, and how quickly

Campiamo → Hipcamp: all unavailable dates for the pitch type — bookings, manual blocks, closed season, availability windows — published 365 days ahead. Hipcamp chooses how often it re-reads your calendar.

Hipcamp → Campiamo: read every 15 minutes; busy dates become blocks marked "Booked on Hipcamp". No booking or guest is invented — the guest's details and payment live in your Hipcamp dashboard. Cancellations release the blocks on the next sync; Sync now on the Channels page forces an immediate read.

When something is wrong

"That link did not return a calendar feed." — the link isn't a calendar export; go back to Sync calendars and copy the .ics link.

Hipcamp shows you full when you're not — almost always the multi-unit problem above: a booking on one unit of a multi-unit pitch type marks the whole date busy.

Blocked dates with no booking to open — that's a Hipcamp stay, or a range you have closed on Hipcamp (Hipcamp publishes those as "Unavailable", and they arrive as a one-pitch hold marked Booked on Hipcamp): dates held here, guest on Hipcamp. Your off-season on Hipcamp will show that way over the winter, one pitch wide, and it clears when Hipcamp drops it.

Sync history with exact failure reasons is on the Channels page, and the note on double bookings applies to Hipcamp like every iCal channel.