Extra person fee?

[Lizabeth1840]

I charge $10.00 for each additional person over 1, but I allow dogs and there is no way to charge extra with airbnb for dogs. (funny that their rates are the same if you allow dogs or not, yet they recommend I rent my place for less than it cost to board a dog in most cities). Anyway, people say only one adult is coming but in their note they say they are coming with their spouse or child. They need to change the adult to person since someone showed up saying only one adult with their daughter that was 17. It is already becoming not worth the effort. Please give me some feedback, I don't always remember to check that 2 adults are booked and they haven't been charged for the second adult. Liz

[Linda108]

Of course you can charge extra fee for a dog. It is not part of the system generated costs. It must be requested at the time of the booking.  Just be sure to describe the fee and any limits you might have to size and number of pets and rules about the pet on the property.  When the reservation is confirmed, use the request/send money option and enter the total amount extra fee related to the pet.

[Lisa723]

@Lizabeth1840 @Linda108 That’s what I do, but you can’t request money before the guest’s final rent payment is made, and I don’t know when that is, so I send the request a week before check-in with arrival instructions.

 Charging more for two people than one sounds difficult, to me. But it’s true that getting incorrect bookings for one guest is a regular thing. Airbnb makes it too easy to do that inadvertently.

[David-and-Annie0]

I gave this issue a lot of thought, and my husband still disagrees with me: he thinks we should charge per person over a certain number. But I don’t feel we should charge per person (and we don’t). We have a cap of 8, but charge the same no matter what. I just feel that charging more per person encourages people to fudge it and not really be honest about the number of people coming. I just raise the overall nightly rate a bit to compensate for fluctuations.
(But I make it clear that the city won’t allow more than 8 on the property.)

When we did have it set up to charge more, I noticed people always inquired or tried to book it putting only 1 guest in that field. I believe that when you charge per person people are too tempted to lie about it. Unless you are there to check them in and see for yourself—in that case, go for it.