Pricing sync issues between Hospitable and your connected online travel agencies (OTAs) can stem from many causes. Markup settings, dynamic pricing tools, connection types, or platform-specific behaviour are some of the possible explanations.
This guide walks through the most common scenarios and how to resolve them.
Hospitable syncs the accommodation rate (nightly price) to OTAs. Cleaning fees, extra-guest fees, and taxes are configured separately on each platform and are not part of the nightly rate sync
Understanding How Pricing Sync Works
When you set or update a price in Hospitable, the accommodation rate (your base nightly price) is applied to each connected OTA/platform on the property. The rate that guests ultimately see on the booking channel may differ from this base rate because each channel applies its own fees, taxes, commissions, and discounts differently.
Key points:
Hospitable sends the nightly accommodation rate — the total guest-facing price may be different from this number.
Instead of looking at the price the guest sees on the booking channel, check your owner's calendar on that platform to compare it with your calendar on Hospitable.
Cleaning fees, extra-guest fees, and other surcharges are managed separately within Hospitable or each platform's settings.
Fees are different to Nightly rate or Pricing.
If you use markup rates in Hospitable, the platform adjusts the base rate by your specified percentage before sending it to the OTA.
Changes may take a few minutes to several hours to reflect on the OTA, depending on the channel and sync queue.
Common Causes of Pricing Discrepancies
Manually Changing Prices on The OTA Calendar
Despite using Hospitable as your PMS, you can still manually change your prices in your Airbnb and Vrbo calendars. The same is not true of Booking.com and Agoda.
Manually changing your prices in the Airbnb calendar
If you either make manual changes directly on your Airbnb calendar or have a dynamic pricing tool connected to your Airbnb account and pushing prices to your Airbnb calendar, then Hospitable will override those prices the next time we perform the 24-hourly push to all the listings on your property. Hospitable will never pull in prices from your Airbnb calendar, and display on the Hospitable calendar.
During this sync, we will detect that the price is different on Airbnb, and we will push out the price we already have in our calendar and override the Airbnb calendar.
Manually changing your prices in the Vrbo calendar
Unlike with Airbnb, Hospitable will pull in any manual pricing changes made on the Vrbo calendar if Vrbo is the lead listing on the property. You can read more about lead listing behaviour here.
While manual updates to your Hospitable calendar are always pushed to all listings immediately, changes made on your Vrbo lead listing's calendar are picked up during our regular 4.5-hour syncs.
If you recently made a change on your Vrbo calendar, it can take up to 4.5 hours for us to detect that change and display it on the Hospitable calendar.
Markup Rates
Markup rates let you increase or decrease the price sent to a specific OTA relative to your base rate in Hospitable. For example, a 10% markup on Booking.com means Hospitable sends a rate 10% higher than your base price to that channel.
Troubleshooting tips:
Go to your property's pricing settings in Hospitable and check whether a markup is applied for the affected channel.
Remember that markups are applied per channel — a markup on Booking.com does not affect Airbnb or Vrbo.
If the OTA price looks higher than expected, check whether a markup is active before investigating further.
You can read more about markups here.
Dynamic Pricing Tool Overrides
If you use a dynamic pricing tool such as PriceLabs, Beyond Pricing, or Wheelhouse, that tool may override manual price changes you make in Hospitable.
How this happens:
Dynamic pricing tools push updated rates to Hospitable on a regular schedule (often daily).
If you manually change a price in Hospitable, the dynamic pricing tool may overwrite it on its next sync cycle.
If your dynamic pricing tool is connected directly to the booking platform or OTA, it might be pushing prices directly to the platform, overriding what Hospitable previously sent. Hospitable will override this on its next push to your platform, but in the meantime, the prices will appear different between Hospitable and the booking platform.
Troubleshooting tips:
If a manual price change reverts, check your dynamic pricing tool's dashboard to see what rate it is currently sending.
To make a manual override stick, you should make the change in your dynamic pricing tool, rather than on Hospitable.
If your dynamic pricing tool is connected directly to your booking platform, you should disconnect it, and connect it directly to Hospitable instead.
A Dynamic Pricing Tool cannot be connected to Booking.com while Booking.com is connected to Hospitable.
Connection Type: Full vs. Limited
The type of connection between Hospitable and your OTA affects what can be synced.
Airbnb
Full (PMS) connection: Hospitable can push all pricing, availability, and booking data directly to Airbnb.
Limited connection: Hospitable cannot push any calendar data to Airbnb, or sync it in from Airbnb. You will need to fully manage your calendar on Airbnb, with no sync between Hospitable and Airbnb.
An Airbnb channel connection can be limited because:
If your Airbnb listing is on a limited connection, pricing changes in Hospitable will not appear on Airbnb. You will need to upgrade to a full API connection for pricing sync to work.
How to check your connection type:
Open your Hospitable account.
Navigate to the Channel connection settings.
Look for the connection type indicator badge — it will say "PMS" or "Calendar restricted" (limited).
Other troubleshooting tips:
When using a dynamic pricing tool with Airbnb via Hospitable, ensure your dynamic pricing tool is connected through Hospitable (not directly to Airbnb), so that rates flow correctly.
Vrbo
Full connection: Pricing sync works as expected.
Calendar restricted / PMS-blocked: If your Vrbo listing is flagged as "Calendar Restricted" or is partially managed, Hospitable will be blocked from pushing pricing to Vrbo. This is a Vrbo-side restriction.
Unlisted/hidden/paused/archived listings on Vrbo: Hospitable cannot make changes to your Vrbo calendar if your Vrbo listing is unlisted, hidden, paused, or archived.
If we attempt to push calendar data to your Vrbo listing while it is unlisted, hidden, paused, or archived, those attempts will fail and be "Skipped". A "Skipped" attempt can never be automatically retried!
Troubleshooting tips:
If Vrbo prices are not updating, check whether the listing is showing a "Calendar Restricted" badge in Hospitable.
You may need to contact Vrbo support to disconnect from the other property management software (PMS) first.
When using a dynamic pricing tool with Vrbo via Hospitable, ensure your dynamic pricing tool is connected through Hospitable (not directly to Vrbo), so that rates flow correctly.
If your Vrbo listing is unlisted, hidden, paused, or archived on Vrbo, you must set it to "live" on Vrbo. After changing the status, it can take a few hours before Hospitable receives the update from Vrbo, and is able to push calendar data to your listing again.
Set your listing to "live" on Vrbo.
Wait at least 2 hours before making calendar updates on Hospitable
Verify whether or not the updates were pushed to Vrbo
If they weren't, contact Hospitable support to perform a Force push for your calendar, to repush your calendar data to Vrbo.
Rejections Due to Local Rules or Airbnb Policies
Airbnb imposes strict rules on pricing, which can lead to rejection of a price push from Hospitable:
Pricing Thresholds: Airbnb adheres to local regulations, such as limiting increases to 10% compared to the currently listed rate (e.g., California’s wildfire laws in specific counties, during the 2025 wildfire emergency). If any date in a batch exceeds the limit, Airbnb rejects the entire batch of updates. Ensure no rate in the sync update surpasses the allowed threshold to avoid this issue.
Inconsistent Enforcement: Airbnb’s approval criteria can vary over time. A rate previously accepted may be rejected in future updates if it violates updated or stricter enforcement policies. Always verify compliance with Airbnb’s pricing criteria before making updates.
Cleaning set fee too high: Airbnb enforces a cap on cleaning fees relative to the nightly price. If the cleaning fee is above $700, then the nightly rate must be equal to or greater than four times the cleaning fee minus $700.
Example: If cleaning fee = $800, then nightly rate must be ≥ 4 × ($800 − $700 = $100) = $400.
Batch Processing Limitations
Hospitable processes pricing updates in five-month date batches. If any single date in the batch violates Airbnb’s rules—such as a rate falling below the platform’s minimum requirements—the entire batch is denied. Ensure none of your dates are in violation of Airbnb policy.
Booking.com: Parent and Child rate plans
On Booking.com, rates and availability are controlled by rate plans. Hosts can choose to have multiple rate plans per listing, creating different offers and prices based on length of stay, cancellation policy, etc.
Pricing is pushed to a rate plan configured in Booking.com.
Hospitable only syncs with one rate plan on Booking.com per listing. This is called the Parent rate plan. Other rate plans (called Child rate plans) can be set up so that they take pricing and availability from the parent rate plan.
If Booking.com has multiple rate plans, each applies its own discount to the base rate Hospitable sends (this is editable by hosts).
The rate guests see on Booking.com may be lower than your Hospitable rate due to these automatic discounts.
Troubleshooting tips:
In order a child rate plan to get pricing from the parent rate plan, it needs to have a badge next to its name, saying "Not XML".
If your child rate plan does not have the "Not XML" badge, you need to connect it to the parent rate plan.
Here is how to set the child rate plan so that it takes pricing and availability from the parent:
Log in to your Booking.com Extranet
Go to Rates & Availability
Select Rate plans
Click the down arrow on the child rate plan
Select 'Edit'
Click 'Edit' next to 'Price'
Tick the one which says 'Based on one of my current rate plans'
Make sure to select the parent rate plan
Click 'Save'
Click 'Apply changes'
Disable any automatic discounts or promotions on Booking.com which you did not intend to apply.
If you have a markup configured in Hospitable for Booking.com, verify the math:
(base rate × (1 + markup %))should equal the rate pushed to the Booking.com parent rate plan.You can then calculate the price for your child rate plans, based on the rate pushed to the parent rate plan minus the percentage discount for the child rate plan.
Airbnb Smart Pricing, Rule Sets, and Custom Promotions
Airbnb has its own dynamic pricing features that can override rates sent by Hospitable, called Smart Pricing.
When you connect your Airbnb listing to a PMS, the Smart Pricing should automatically get disabled on Airbnb. However, in some rare instances, it does not get disabled and continues to try to set prices on your Airbnb calendar, overriding the prices sent by Hospitable.
Smart Pricing: If enabled on Airbnb, it may adjust your nightly rate regardless of what Hospitable sends. Turn off Smart Pricing in Airbnb if you want Hospitable to control pricing.
Rule sets (length-of-stay discounts, early-bird discounts, etc.): These are applied on top of the base rate from Hospitable. They can cause the guest-facing price to differ from your Hospitable rate.
Custom promotions: When you create a Custom Promotion on Airbnb, Airbnb creates a custom price based on a 60-days average price in your calendar. Any pricing updates pushed by Hospitable or any other source will be ignored for the promoted dates, as Airbnb will keep the prices set on the dates at the time the promotion was created.
Troubleshooting tips:
To disable your Smart Pricing on Airbnb:
Log in to your Airbnb account
Click Calendar and select the listing calendar you want to change
Click Price settings
Under Base price, click Smart Pricing
Disable Smart Pricing
Click Save
Check your Rule-sets on Airbnb. You can see that on the multi-listing calendar on Airbnb, here:
Check for Custom promotions in your Airbnb calendar.
Log in to your Airbnb account
Click Calendar and select the listing calendar you want to change
Click Price settings
See if you have custom promotions applied to the date or dates in question.
Muted Properties
When you mute a property on Hospitable, the listings on that property will no longer receive any calendar pushes or updates from Hospitable, and Hospitable will not pull in any calendar data from those listings.
When a listing is muted, no pricing updates are sent.
When you unmute a listing, Hospitable will push the calendar data in your Hospitable calendar out to the listings on the property.
Troubleshooting tips:
Check whether the affected listing is currently on a muted property in Hospitable.
Go to Hospitable > Properties
Open up the Muted properties tab on the left-hand side panel
After unmuting a property, Hospitable will perform a push to the listings on the property, which should align your calendars and pricing.
Step-by-Step Troubleshooting Checklist
If your OTA pricing does not match what you expect, work through this checklist:
Check the connection type. Is the listing on a full PMS or API connection? If it has a "calendar restriction", pricing will not sync.
Check for markups. Is a markup rate applied for the affected channel in Hospitable?
Check dynamic pricing tools. Is a tool like PriceLabs or Beyond Pricing sending its own rates directly to the OTA? Is it overriding your manual changes?
Check OTA-side settings. Are Airbnb Smart Pricing, rule sets, or Booking.com rate plans modifying the price after it arrives from Hospitable?
Check listing status. Is the listing active (not unlisted, snoozed, or muted)?
Check for PMS conflicts (Vrbo). Is the listing managed by another PMS?
Wait and re-check. Price updates can take a few minutes to propagate. If you just made a change, allow time for it to sync.
If none of the above resolves the issue, contact Hospitable support with the listing name, affected channel, expected price, and actual price shown on the OTA. Screenshots help!