How guests are checked before they arrive

What every guest does before check-in

Four checks sit between a booking and the front door. Together, they mean you know who is in your home, how many of them there are and why, and that they agreed your rules in writing before arriving.

• Photo ID
• Signed rental agreement
• Damage deposit or waiver
• Who is staying
• Why they are staying
• Clear end date

Each check does a different job. The ID ties the booking to a real person. The agreement sets the rules and makes the guest responsible for damage. The deposit or waiver puts money behind that promise; our guide to when a guest damages your home explains the difference between the two. And asking who is staying and why is the simplest party check there is, because a genuine guest answers it easily.

All of them happen between booking and arrival, and a sensible rule for any host is that entry details go out only once every check is done. A typical sequence looks like this.

1. At booking
   The platform’s checksThe booking site runs its own checks, such as Airbnb’s identity verification, and takes payment.
2. Soon after
   Who and whyThe guest says who is staying and what the trip is for.
3. Before arrival
   ID and agreementPhoto ID is matched to the booking name and the rental agreement is signed.
4. Before arrival
   Deposit or waiverThe guest pays a damage deposit or a damage waiver.
5. Check-in
   EntryLock box or entry details go to a guest who has passed every check.

What Airbnb and Booking.com check for you

Airbnb requires every booking guest to complete identity verification. Depending on the person, it checks their name and details against trusted third-party sources, or asks for a photo of a passport, driving licence or national identity card, sometimes with a selfie to match it. Hosts have to verify too.

That check has two limits. Airbnb says the process has safeguards but cannot promise that someone is who they say they are. And the information a guest gives to verify their identity is not shared with hosts. If you need ID yourself, Airbnb only lets you ask for it after booking when the listing says it is required for legal or compliance reasons, so put that in the listing. A verified guest has passed Airbnb’s check, but you still have no name and photo to match to the person at the door, and no idea who else is coming.

Airbnb also screens bookings for party risk. Its reservation screening technology, rolled out in the UK in 2023, looks at signals such as the guest’s review history, the length of the trip, how far the guest is from the listing and whether the stay falls on a weekend. If a booking looks higher risk, Airbnb says it may reject it, ask the guest to accept its rules against disruptive gatherings, or pass it to a person for manual review.

Booking.com works differently. Guests give contact and payment details when they book, and hosts set their own house rules. Its online check-in feature can collect passport or ID card details, but Booking.com describes its role as passing those details to the property, which then reviews and confirms the check-in. In short, checking the guest is left to the host.

Based on Airbnb’s and Booking.com’s own help pages. Platforms change their tools, so check the current rules.

The platforms’ checks protect a whole marketplace. A host’s checks protect one home, so they can ask questions a platform never would.

Spotting a party booking

A party booking often has a recognisable shape. These are patterns to look at more closely, not reasons to refuse: plenty of local, last-minute, one-night bookings are a family visit or a boiler that has broken at home.

When something looks off, the next step is a polite message, not a cancellation. Ask who is coming and what the trip is for. Genuine guests answer quickly and in detail. Vague, evasive or changing answers are the real warning sign, far more than any single pattern above.

Clear rules, written down before the stay, are also what you will want to show if a neighbour complains or you make an insurance claim. Our guide to insurance for short lets covers what insurers expect.

Screen the booking, not the person

In Great Britain, the Equality Act 2010 applies to anyone providing a service to the public (Northern Ireland has its own equality laws), and letting a home to paying guests is a service. It is unlawful to refuse a booking, offer worse terms or treat a guest differently because of a protected characteristic. For services, these are:

• Age (for those aged 18 or over)
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race, including colour, nationality and ethnic or national origin
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

So every check should be about the booking, not the guest’s background. A one-night Saturday stay booked from a nearby postcode is a fact about the booking. A guest’s name, accent, religion or nationality is not, and must never come into it. Disability adds a positive duty: you are expected to make reasonable adjustments, such as accepting an assistance dog in a home that otherwise has a no-pets rule.

Age needs care. Government guidance for small businesses gives the example that a self-catering holiday home may refuse guests under a certain age, such as 21, if it has a good enough reason. A blanket age limit with nothing behind it is much harder to defend than a question about the booking itself.

Why the rental agreement and the licence matter

Platform house rules are a start, but a signed rental agreement is the guest’s own written promise. It sets the number of guests, rules out parties and events, says who pays for damage and records the dates of the stay. If something goes wrong, you can point to terms the guest signed, rather than arguing about what a listing said.

The agreement also fixes what kind of stay it is. Guests in homes we run stay on a licence, not a tenancy, and every stay ends on the last paid night, as our booking terms say. A licence is permission to stay for a set time. A tenancy gives someone rights to live in a home, and ending one usually means formal notice and, if they will not leave, a court.

The Protection from Eviction Act 1977, which covers England and Wales, treats a licence that gives someone the right to stay for a holiday only as excluded from its usual protections. That is part of why a holiday stay ends cleanly on the day it was booked to end. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules.

Overseas guests and the hotel records rule

A little-known law from 1972 still applies to paid stays. The Immigration (Hotel Records) Order 1972 covers ‘any hotel or other premises, whether furnished or unfurnished, where lodging or sleeping accommodation is provided for reward’. That wording is wide enough to take in a short let, and the ‘keeper’ who must keep the record includes anyone acting as manager for the owner.

Guests who are not British, Irish or Commonwealth citizens must also give the number and place of issue of their passport, or of another document showing identity and nationality, and on leaving, their next destination and address if known. The police, or anyone authorised by the Home Secretary, can ask to inspect the record. Recording nationality here is a legal duty, not a reason to treat anyone differently.

In practice, a check-in form that records the arrival date, name and nationality of every guest aged 16 or over, and asks overseas guests for their passport details, covers it.

Looking after guests’ ID

A photo of a passport or driving licence is personal data, so UK GDPR applies to it. The data protection principles set by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) turn into a few habits any host can follow.

1. Have a reasonKnow your lawful basis for each piece of data. For the hotel records register, it is a legal duty.
2. Tell guestsExplain what you collect, why and for how long, before they send anything.
3. Take only what you needThe law says data must be ‘adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary’.
4. Keep it safeUse a secure check-in system, not email chains or a personal phone.
5. Delete on timeKeep it no longer than you need it, then delete it.

Data minimisation is the habit people forget. Decide what each check needs, keep only that, and set a date to delete it. The hotel records register must be kept for at least 12 months; for everything else, the period should match the reason you collected it, such as a possible damage claim.

Questions owners ask