I could not get an answer on Vrbo forum so I’m hoping to get it here. I need more time to clean my property before the next guests arrive. I do not like same day turnover. On Airbnb, I can set so that 1 day will be automatically blocked before and after a stay. But I could not find a setting on Vrbo to do that. I can manually block the days once a booking is made but there’s no automatic way on Vrbo. Greatly appreciate it if you know how. Thanks in advance.
LOL. I don’t know why other platforms even bother to have forums when we are clearly the only competent ones.
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Vrbo just changed their forum format and not it’s not as helpful like it used to be. This forum has helped me a lot and it’s a great forum!
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Someone else complained about that recently. I think they are moving their operation over here. 
I don’t know the answer though as I’m an Airbnb host.
No idea. We use a channel manager so it pushes availability to VRBO/HA, and don’t have to worry about setting anything in any of the OTA’s we use.
I just had a quick scoot round the app, couldn’t see any way to do what you want. Maybe different on a desktop, but I doubt it.
Send a support message, we’ve found them to be quick and efficient, if they can do it from their end then I’m sure they will.
Alternatively, use Airbnb as a master calendar, and then link (via iCal) with your VRBO/HA calendar. It’ll then pick up the buffer days.
JF
I do it manually. I only have 1 listing on VRBO so it isn’t that big of a deal to me. I just block the shoulder days as soon as I get a new booking. Have to remember to manually un-block when someone cancels.
I check the calendar over top to bottom every time we get a new reservation just to make sure we have enough turnover time. Sometimes I end up blocking 2 or 3 nights between just because of the timing, esp. if the exiting guest has stayed for 3+ days.
Being rural, it takes longer to get repairs done and I always want to try to make sure that we have time so that one guest’s damage doesn’t turn into the next one’s inconvenience.
I’m fairly new (just three years hosting) but thanks to the expertise of this forum, I have survived and grown so much as a host.
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Me too.
This forum has helped me immensely . Thanks everyone
RR
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There is a new tab under “Property” called “Health and Safety”. One of the questions is “Are you making this property Unavailable for a certain amount of time between guests?” You then have the option to choose 1-3 days.
Whether they’ve carried through the technology to make this happen remains to be seen. I just received a booking for mid-July and the have not blocked the days afterward, even though I have selected 3 days between guests.
Good luck!
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As you found out, it is informative as opposed to being functional.
Just had a look on the site and it doesn’t appear that an automatic buffer day can be set. I think importing your Airbnb calendar, which should have the blocked days, is the only method. Try it and let us know how you get on.
JF
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If you link your calendars and block on airbnb it automatically blocks you on vrbo. There is a good utube that showed me how to link the calendars.
My Airbnb calendar is synced with VRBO so it automatically blocks the dates
It doesn’t automatically block the dates if the reservation originates on VRBO.
Calendar sync can only bring over the exact dates that the VRBO reservation has blocked on your calendar.
So if you get an IB while you are sleeping on VRBO, you have to scramble and manually block the shoulder dates and pray there hasn’t been any overlap.
Heads up if anyone is using the HomeAway app still, you/guests need to switch to the VRBO app. They sent an email that they are consolidating everything under VRBO (which they really want you to pronounce as ‘verb-o’ now), which directed me to read these FAQs.
https://www.homeaway.com/discoveryhub/a/vrbo-consolidation-faqs
Keep a close eye on calendar merge though! We had an issue back in December where VRBO allowed a double booking during an already-booked Airbnb stay. When I realized we had a double booking I contacted both and VRBO admitted they had a software glitch that caused it. Airbnb was great and helped contact one of the guests, who was nice enough to stay at one of our other properties. Then we just caught a problem a week or so ago where a VRBO booking cancelled but those dates weren’t freed up on Airbnb. We noticed it, unblocked it, and had a booking within an hour!
Thanks @JohnF. My calendars are linked and Airbnb shows the VRBO booking, but will not add the buffer days I have set on Airbnb. I’m manually adding them at this point.
I’m curious as to which channel manager you use. I’ve tried a few and wasn’t overly impressed. I have a single, whole house property.
Yes, we went through a few before trying our current one, Beds24. It’s not the most glamorous interface but it does what we want it do, and does it well.
It isn’t the most intuitive either, but support is quick to answer, pointing you to the relevant help article or giving you advice. We’ve got Airbnb, BDC and VRBO linked and it costs around €22 per month. They have a more expensive option, where they do all the setup for you, which for us would be €50/60 per month.
VRBO is iCal only as they wont let you access their XML connection unless you are listing five or more separate properties.
The “buffer days” are set within Beds24, which are then pushed to the platforms and works perfectly, for us.
JF
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It seems like one would be able to work around this for $Free.99 by having both the VRBO and AirBnb calendrs sync to a Google iCal link:
https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37648?hl=en
Am I mistaken?
Sorry to bump and old post, but it is where i ended up from google.
I was having the same issue and didn’t want to pay for a full channel manager, i managed to find a service called “spamarationtime”.com * which blocks days before and after bookings automatically via a calendar link
*Spammy link direction edited by JF
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