If a guest starts a booking with MercadoPago but does not finish paying, the dates for that reservation can stay blocked on your property calendar.
Why this happens. MercadoPago is a redirect-style payment processor. When a guest starts a booking, the reservation is created in the system and the guest is sent to the MercadoPago website to complete payment. If the guest closes that page without paying, the reservation stays in an unpaid state but still holds those dates as unavailable. This is by design for the redirect flow. Without automatic cleanup, any abandoned booking blocks the calendar indefinitely.
How to resolve it. Enable automatic cancellation. With automatic cancellation, unpaid reservations are removed after roughly 30 minutes, which frees up those dates. Before cancelling, the check verifies that payment was not received, so guests who complete payment close to the cutoff are not affected.
Once automatic cancellation is active, abandoned bookings clear from your calendar on their own, and the guest receives a standard booking cancelled notification.