Extra Guest Fee

An extra guest fee is a per-night surcharge applied when the number of guests exceeds the base occupancy included in a property's standard nightly rate. For example, a 3-bedroom home might include up to 6 guests in its base rate and charge $20-$40 per additional guest per night. This fee covers the incremental costs of higher occupancy, including increased utility usage, additional linens and towels, greater wear on furnishings, and longer cleaning times.

Set your base occupancy at the number of guests your property can comfortably accommodate with its standard bedding setup, typically 2 guests per bedroom. This keeps your base nightly rate competitive for the majority of bookings while generating additional revenue from larger groups. Analyze your booking data to find the most common group size. If 80% of bookings are 4 guests or fewer, setting a base of 4 with extra fees beyond that optimizes both competitiveness and revenue.

Most major OTAs including Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com support extra guest fee settings that automatically calculate and apply the surcharge based on the guest count entered during booking. However, the way fees display to guests varies by platform. A channel manager like Hostaway syncs extra guest fee settings across all connected platforms, ensuring consistent pricing regardless of where the booking originates and eliminating the need to update fees manually on each channel.