Hello everyone! I am trying to find a way to limit the number of children/infants guests can bring to our house. I know it was possible to do at some stage, but can’t find it now. Just received a booking request for 2 families (4 adults, 1 child, 3 infants). Our guest limit is 5 people! They are looking for an extra 2 travel cots and a camp bed, which wouldn’t even fit into the bedroom. I know it’s too late to change settings for this group, but definitely don’t want to have to deal with this kind of thing again. Thanks!
If you haven’t confirmed the Request yet; inform the requester that “you, as well as Airbnb, consider all infants, children and adults as individual guests – so 4 adults, 1 child and 3 infants is 8 guests, not 4. Since 8 is way over your 5 guest limit, you simply cannot accommodate them.” Then click the Decline button.
I think the place to limit the number of infants/children would be the first line of your house rules. “Number of guests including children and infants can total no more than five.” You can also put this so it is visible in the opening window of your Listing Description; we do this n our listing with the phrase “No Children, No Pets”.
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Sounds like hell on a stick. I hope you won’t get dinged for cancelling. Call Airbnb to ask about cancelling.
Yes update your listing to say 5 people total, including children. Shame Airbnb says infants should be free, I’d like to charge twice the price, much as I adored mine when they were young.
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AirBnB isn’t going to help you here because they don’t count infants as guests, so they don’t apply to the total headcount max.
“Infants (children under 2 years old) aren’t counted as guests when you’re booking a reservation and don’t incur any extra costs.”
I think it’s likely that they are lying about the age of the “infants” in order to book. Ask them for the ages of each child/infant and see what they say, and let them know you have security cameras to verify each guest when they arrive. That usually works for me to scare people off from lying about their guests.
eta: I would also just be honest and say there isn’t room enough for that many people, even small ones. 
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I have my listing checked as unsuitable for infants and small children, citing that there are safety issues, not “baby proofed” , breakable decorations and no suitable bedding. "
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But it doesn’t sound as if the OP is trying to restrict children altogether, just trying to keep people to the max head count, including infants.
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Yes. But it seems like a case of give an inch and take a mile. Allow one infant but get 3 or 4!
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Small people take up more space with all their stuff!
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And all their smells and sticky fingers.
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Yes, much more cleaning. When mine were young I had to really bite my tongue when parents would change nappies on my sofa. For me it was strictly a changing mat or towel deal, and for a poo definitely a bathroom deal. People seem nose blind to infants.
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We live out in the country and have a septic bed. In my rules they must accept that only a total of 4 guests including children and infants are allowed in the space as undue stress from 5 or more guests will damage our septic system. This has really helped us with streamlining requests to 4 guest booking, but I understand not everyone has this set up.
I had to add this rule this year, as for some strange reason we got a number of family bookings even though we are not children friendly. The families we had were great and we didn’t have any problems but my cleaners did tell me about sticky hand prints at knee height along the stainless steel fridge!
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Diaper smells, damage to walls, broken decorations, throwing rocks at my chickens and crying at 3am. Nope.
There are safety considerations, like electric kettles, water temperature settings, electrical outlets and power strips.
Bedding is a real concern. Wetting a memo foam mattress with back to back bookings would be a disaster, not to mention falling out. I would demand that they bring their own portable bedding or cancel. Diapers need to go outside immediately.
In a large, full home venue, maybe, but not in single rooms with live in hosts. Who wants extra guests who are incontinent, scream and cry— and act like, ummm, babies?
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Yes! When mine were young I used to put the poo from the nappies in the toilet - that’s where it belongs. This stops stinking the place out.
At home I had washable nappies anyway, so easy under modern conditions.
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I have already sent message to guest telling them we don’t have the travel cots, nor a camp bed and the house is too small. No reply yet! Our house is listed as family friendly and we’ve had no bad experiences, but have only ever had 1 family at at time with a max of three kids in total. I am planning on another message requesting confirmation they know we cannot supply what they have requested.
Definitely remember a feature on the Air website which specifically allowed restricting number of children/infants, around the same time when they kept posting messages about guests were now required to inform hosts if and how many children they were bringing.
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Like others said, I have it in my house rules:
9. All guests of all ages including infants must be included in your total guest count - I do not charge extra per guest but the total guest count may not exceed the maximum allowed for the unit.
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You can also advise them that local council restricts your maximum occupancy to x amount of guests as does your insurance provider so unfortunately you will be unable to host them as you strictly comply with all regulation requirements.
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Hi just been asked to supply spare beds in case the children wet the ones supplied,the kids are not the nightmare the parents are ,you couldn’t make this up
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The only time I had a kid, she tampered with my expensive decor, left MANY ugly marks on my walls, drew on my bedside table. No thanks.
Omg can you get them to cancel?
I know… kids can be a handful Luckily we don’t have expensive decor, but I admit the walls have needed a touch-up occasionally. After a lot of searching I eventually found that I had actually limited the total No of kids to three in our house rules (under “additional rules”, very hard to find), but that doesn’t automatically translate into preventing people from requesting to book with 4 kids.
Since our government in Ireland seems hell-bent on destroying our Airbnb business anyway I have accepted the booking request, on condition they have to manage with just one travel cot… we’ll see how it works out!