Extra guest when booked only for one

[Aracely12]

Hi I’m a new host, I barely started hosting this month. My place is to host 6 people and I charge $10 per person after 1 person. 
I’ve been having the issue of people booking for one person and it ends up being more then one. How do you control that? I will greatly appreciate your feedback.  

[Katrina79]

@Aracely12 This is exactly the problem with charging extra per person, but there are some options that you can implement.

1) Be proactive and confirm the number of guests in advance-that way you can update the reservation to accurately reflect the number of guests.

2) If you notice after the stay you can send a message inquiring how many extra guests stayed the night and then put in a request for the payment through the resolution centre. You will want the communication between the guest and yourself to be on the platform so that you can involve Airbnb if the guest doesn’t want to pay. 
3) Change your pricing structure, charge more per night and only add an additional charge after 4 guests (or whatever you think will work). 
4) Lots if hosts have a camera doorbell and can therefore definitively know how many guests stayed. I suppose this is helpful to keep your guests honest if they know there is a doorbell camera. 
I’ve tried quite a few different pricing structures and find that an additional charge per guest only works well if you are a home stay. Otherwise you are continually chasing down payments from guests and it becomes too time consuming. 

[Aracely12]

Thank you @Katrina79  for your info, I thought that charging extra it was going to be a better control on the amount of people staying but I was wrong:(...

My list is a basement and I live upstairs, I also have a security camera system so that’s why I know exactly how many people is coming in.  
People know that I’m upstairs but still, so I think I’m gonna have do some adjustments on the pricing and go from there. 

[Lisa723]

@Aracely12 it's very easy and frequent for guests to book for one by accident. Whenever you get a booking for one person, I would confirm it immediately and propose an alteration request if it's wrong. But I also think it's hard to operate with a base rate for one person. Double occupancy is the standard expectation. In your shoes I would set the base rate for at least two, or the most natural/frequent guest count (in your case possibly four).