—Airbnb extra guest fee
A six-person reservation that arrives with nine is one of the most common — and most unbillable — losses a host absorbs. Here is how the fee actually gets collected, a paste-ready block for your listing, and the one step that turns a stated fee into a charged one.
01How the fee gets charged
There are two ways to handle extra guests on Airbnb. The first is a pricing setting: under your listing's pricing you can add a per-guest charge that applies above a guest count you set, so a larger party simply books at a higher nightly rate. That is the clean path — the money is collected at booking and nothing is in dispute.
The second path is the one hosts actually search for: the guest booked for the lower count and then more people stayed. That fee is not collected automatically. You open a request in the Airbnb Resolution Center, name the amount, and attach what you have. Airbnb charges the guest's card only when it can see two things: the extra-guest fee was disclosed before the stay, and the guest acknowledged it. Disclosure alone — a fee sitting in your listing text — is a weak file. It proves the fee existed, not that the guest ever agreed to it.
Whichever path you use, the reservation's guest count is the number everything is measured against. If a booking says four, the fifth overnight guest is unregistered. Keep the count honest at booking and the extra-guest case becomes simple arithmetic instead of an argument.
02The listing block
Drop this into your listing's "Additional Rules" field. It states the occupancy limit, the day-visitor limit, and the per-guest, per-night fee in the itemized form a Resolution Center agent can act on. Edit the amount to your market — $100 per guest per night is a common starting point, not a recommendation.
OCCUPANCY & EXTRA-GUEST FEE 1. Maximum occupancy is the guest count on the reservation. Every overnight guest must be named on the booking. 2. Day visitors are limited to 2 at a time and must leave by 10:00 PM. 3. Any overnight guest not on the reservation is an unregistered guest and is billed at the rate below. Unregistered overnight guest: $100 per guest, per night. By booking, you acknowledge this occupancy limit and the extra-guest fee. The fee is charged through the Airbnb Resolution Center where an unregistered overnight guest is documented during the stay.
With this block live, your fee is disclosed. That is genuine progress — but it is one of the two things Airbnb looks for. The listing text shows the fee was published. It does not show the guest who booked your place read that line or agreed to it. After an incident, that gap is what the file is missing.
The block stays useful regardless. Pair it with the second half — below — and the fee becomes something you can actually collect.
03Disclosure vs. acknowledgment
Disclosure: you stated the extra-guest fee and it is published in the listing. Acknowledgment: the guest confirmed that specific fee, with a timestamp, before check-in. The Resolution Center wants both. Most extra-guest requests fail because the host has the first and not the second — and you cannot create an acknowledgment after the stay, because you cannot get a guest to sign something dated before a check-in that already happened.
The signed acknowledgment is evidence, not a verdict. It does not guarantee Airbnb charges the card, and it does not litigate the dispute for you. What it does is close the most common reason an extra-guest request gets nothing: a fee that was disclosed but never acknowledged.
—What changes when it’s signed
A rule pasted into a listing tells the guest it exists. A signed acknowledgment is dated, IP-recorded, and tapped line-by-line — and produces an immutable PDF on file before check-in.
Both halves cover the Resolution Center pattern: the disclosure (your listing block) and the acknowledgment (this certificate). Same packet, both halves.
Open the sample certificate PDF
04Put the fee on the file
PreArrive takes the occupancy rule and the extra-guest fee you just copied and turns them into a packet the guest signs in about ninety seconds, before check-in. They tap each rule and each fee to acknowledge it, draw a signature, and you get a PDF certificate — disclosure and acknowledgment in one file. Free covers one property, no credit card.
Build a packet from these rules once, send it on every reservation. Free covers one property.
05Keep reading