Extra Guest Fee

The nightly rate covers a number of guests. Everyone above that number pays a fixed amount per night on top of it. You can set a different amount for adults and children, and infants are always free.

This works for two situations that look different but are the same calculation:

• A cottage. The nightly rate is 1,000 and covers 2 people. Each extra adult costs 150.
• A campsite pitch, hostel or a group of friends. The nightly rate is 27.50 and covers 1 person -- the main booker. Each extra adult costs 27.50 and each child 15.

In the second case the price simply grows per person: two adults pay 55, an adult with a child pays 42.50.

Setting it up

Where you set it depends on how the place is priced, because the fee lives with the rest of your prices.

Fixed price. Go to the listing, open the Pricing tab and find Extra guest fee.

Rate plan. Go to Rates, open the rate plan and find Extra guest fee between the other pricing options. Because the fee sits on the rate plan, every listing using that plan gets the same amounts.

Then fill in four things:

1. Guests included -- how many people are already in the nightly rate. Set this equal to your maximum occupancy and no surcharge is ever added.
2. Extra adult -- a fixed amount per person per night.
3. Extra child -- the same, for children.
4. Child up to age -- the age at which someone still counts as a child. We suggest 16: that is the cut-off the channels use themselves, so a direct booking and an OTA booking count the same family the same way.

Who fills the included places

Adults fill the included places first, then children.

With 2 guests included and a party of 1 adult and 3 children, that one child moves into the second included place and only two children pay the surcharge. Infants never count -- not for the included places and not for the fee.

What channels do with it

This is the part worth checking, because every channel handles it differently.

Airbnb receives the fee, but it only supports one price per extra person and has no separate child rate at all. A child therefore pays the adult amount on Airbnb, no matter what you set here. That is a limitation of Airbnb itself.

Booking.com, Vrbo and Expedia receive the adult side of the calculation on newly connected rate plans: the price grows per adult in the party. Plans connected earlier don't get this yet — they still sell at the base rate, so a larger party is sold too cheaply there until the plan is reconnected. Child pricing is a different story altogether: the channel manager never sends child details to these channels (confirmed by Channex support). Whatever you set here for children only applies to direct bookings. If you want a child discount on Booking.com, Vrbo or Expedia, set it up in that channel's own dashboard — for example the Booking.com extranet under child rates.

Direct bookings and check-in always use the full calculation, including the child rate and your own child age limit.

WARNING

After setting up an extra guest fee, open each connected channel and check what it actually shows for a larger party. Channels translate this differently, and the amount a guest sees there is the amount you are bound to.

Watch out for double charging

If you also have a per-person product such as Extra guest fee under Products & Services, that product charges every guest -- including the ones already covered by your nightly rate. Combined with this setting a guest pays twice for the same person.

When you save an extra guest fee, hejGuide lists any per-person products that would overlap. It does not switch them off for you: only you know whether a per-person product is a duplicate or something else entirely, such as breakfast.

Seasons

The amounts are fixed and do not move with the season. If your nightly rate goes from 27.50 in low season to 40 in high season, two adults pay 67.50 in high season -- not 80. This matches how Airbnb and Booking.com handle extra-person pricing.