Guests & policies
Decide how many guests can book, and what your booking form promises them about cancelling, changing dates, and deposits.
These settings live in the dashboard under Bookings, then your rental’s Booking settings, then the Guests & Policies tab. Everything on the tab is guest-facing: the numbers shape the guest picker on your booking form, and the policies are the short panels a guest reads just before they send a request or pay. Each rental has its own set, so a two-bedroom apartment and a six-berth boat never share a policy by accident.
One rule runs through the whole tab. Anything RentalBeam writes reaches each guest in their own language, across 24 languages. Anything you type yourself is shown to every guest exactly as you typed it, in the language you wrote it in. Each setting below says which of the two you are getting.
Max total guests
You are deciding the largest party your rental can take. The guest sees a guest picker on the booking form that will not go past your number, so an eight-person request never reaches you for a place that sleeps four. This is the only guest setting you have to fill in, and it is the one guests always see.
Example. A cottage in Asheville sleeps four. Set Max total guests to 4. A guest can pick 1, 2, 3 or 4 people, and nothing above that.
Everything else on this card is optional and sits behind More guest details, which you open with Show more. Use it when you want the party broken down rather than counted as one number.
Adults and children counters
Switch this to Shown and the booking form asks for adults and children separately instead of one guest total. You can then set Max adults and Max children. Both are optional: leave one empty and it reads No limit, which means only the total applies.
Children still count toward Max total guests exactly like adults do, so the two numbers narrow the total rather than adding to it. Max children always stays at least one below the total, because a booking of children with no adult is not a reservation anyone takes.
Example. A cottage that sleeps four, with two proper beds and a sofa bed for kids: Max total guests 4, Max adults 2, Max children 3. A family of two adults and two children books. Three adults cannot.
Children under this age don’t count toward your maximum
This is the free-age rule, for babies who sleep in a cot and do not take a bed. Set an age and a child younger than it stops counting toward your maximum, so a family is not blocked by an infant. It changes how many people fit and nothing else. What a child is charged is a separate decision you make on the Pricing tab.
Example. Set the age to 3 on a rental with Max total guests 4. Two adults, two children aged 7 and 9, and a one-year-old count as four guests, and the request goes through.
Pet counter
Switch this to Shown and guests tell you how many pets they are bringing. Max pets caps it, or leave it empty for No limit. Pets are counted on their own and never come out of your guest total.
Reservation notice
You are deciding the one short line a guest reads directly under the booking button, at the moment they are about to commit. Its job is to answer "what happens when I press this", so nobody hesitates over whether they are about to be charged.
For any setup that takes payment or bills later, RentalBeam writes the line for you and keeps it matched to that setup, so it can never say the wrong thing after you change your booking flow. It is shown on the tab as Setup-managed notice, and reaches each guest in their own language:
| Your setup | What the guest reads under the button |
|---|---|
| Pay in widget, or any setup taking the card inline | Secure payment starts on the next step. |
| Request now, bill later | No charge yet. The host reviews your request first. |
On an Inquiry only rental there is nothing to explain about payment, so the box is yours to write in. Leave it blank and guests read the standard line in their own language. Type something and every guest sees your words exactly as written, in the language you wrote them, so keep it short and keep it true.
Example.An inquiry-only rental writes: "We review each inquiry personally and reply within 24 hours." A guest in Berlin reads that sentence in English, because it is yours, not ours.
Cancellation policy
You are deciding what you promise a guest about getting their money back. The guest reads it in a Cancellation Policy panel on the booking form, above the booking button, before they send anything. If you take payment through a payment link, the same policy is repeated on the payment page, so the terms are in front of them again at the moment they pay.
Pick one of four presets and RentalBeam writes the guest-facing wording for you, translated into every language the widget speaks:
| Preset | What you are promising |
|---|---|
| Flexible | 100% refund until 14 days before check-in, plus date changes until 7 days before. |
| Moderate | 50% refund until 14 days before check-in, plus date changes until 7 days before. |
| Firm | 50% refund until 30 days before check-in, plus date changes until 14 days before. |
| Strict | No refund and no date changes. |
Example. You pick Moderate. A guest books September 21, 2026 for $1,200 and cancels on September 1, twenty days out. They are inside the 14-day window, so your policy promises them $600 back. A guest who cancels on September 14 is past the deadline and your policy promises nothing.
No policy is the fifth choice, and it hides the panel completely. It is only offered while guest payments are off. Once you take money through the widget, a policy is required and a new rental starts on Strict until you choose otherwise, so a guest never pays without seeing terms.
Custom
Pick Custom when none of the four presets matches what you actually do. You set two numbers and one switch, and RentalBeam still writes the wording and still translates it:
| Field | What it sets |
|---|---|
| Refund window | How many days before check-in a guest can still cancel and qualify for a refund. After that day, your policy promises nothing. |
| Refund amount | The share of the booking total you return when they cancel in time. 100% is a full refund, 0% makes the booking non-refundable. |
| Date changes | Allowed or Not allowed. Allowed adds the Date change window below. |
Example. A lakeside cabin that fills up in July sets Refund window to 45 days and Refund amount to 75%. A guest cancelling three months out gets three quarters of the total back. A guest cancelling in the last six weeks gets nothing back, and read that before they booked.
Guest-facing preview
Under the presets and under the custom builder, the Guest-facing preview shows the finished sentences a guest will read, word for word, in English. It is not a sample or an approximation: the preview and the widget render from the same source, so what you see there is what an English-speaking guest sees, and every other guest reads the same thing in their own language.
Date change window
You are deciding how late a guest may ask to move their stay to different dates. It is part of the cancellation policy, and it is the second sentence a guest reads in that panel: "Guests may request a date change up to 7 days before check-in, subject to availability." The four presets each set it for you. Choose Custom, set Date changes to Allowed, and the Date change window field appears so you can pick your own number of days.
Set Date changes to Not allowedand guests read "Date changes are not included in this policy" instead, which is what Strict does.
Example.A guest with a 7-day window and a check-in of September 21, 2026 can ask you to move their stay up to September 14. The wording says "request" and "subject to availability" on purpose: the guest asks, you decide, and you move the dates on the booking yourself.
Security deposit
You are telling guests a deposit exists and how it is handled. RentalBeam never collects it. No card is held, nothing is charged, and no money moves through the widget for it. This setting is a notice, and the deposit itself is arranged between you and the guest.
Fill in the amount and, if the word "Security Deposit" is not what you call it, a label of your own. The guest sees the label and the amount in their own currency format. Then pick a Deposit notice to sit under it:
| Notice | What the guest reads |
|---|---|
| Standard | A refundable security deposit is required and will be arranged directly with the host. |
| No notice | Nothing. The amount is shown on its own. |
| Collected at pickup | A refundable security deposit is collected at pickup and returned after the rental, subject to inspection. |
| Cash on arrival | A refundable security deposit is payable in cash on arrival and returned at the end of your rental. |
Those four are ours, so they arrive in each guest’s own language. Type your own wording in the box instead and it is shown to every guest exactly as typed, in the one language you wrote it.
Example.A boat rental in Key West sets the amount to $500, the label to "Damage deposit", and the notice to Collected at pickup. A guest booking from France reads "Damage deposit: $500" with the pickup sentence beneath it in French.
Common questions
Can a guest cancel their own booking?
No. There is no cancel button anywhere a guest can reach. A guest who wants out contacts you, and you open the booking in the Bookings tab and use Cancel booking. That step lets you notify the guest and add a short note to the email, so they hear it from you rather than from a silent status change.
Does the refund happen automatically?
No. Your policy is a promise you publish, not a machine that pays it out. RentalBeam never moves money back on its own. For payments you took through Stripe, issue the refund from your Stripe dashboard; RentalBeam picks it up and records it on the booking, including partial refunds, so the booking always shows what was actually returned. For anything you collected outside the widget, you refund it the way you took it.
Does my policy appear in the confirmation email?
No. Guests read it on the booking form before they commit, and again on the payment page if you send a payment link. Confirmation emails cover the stay and the money. If you want the terms in a guest’s inbox as well, put them in your own message when you confirm.
What language do guests read my policies in?
Anything RentalBeam writes reaches guests in their own language, across 24 languages: the four cancellation presets, every sentence the custom builder produces, the standard and preset deposit notices, and the setup-managed reservation notice. Anything you type yourself is shown exactly as typed, in the language you wrote it. That is a deliberate trade: we will not machine-translate your promises and change what they mean.
One exception worth knowing: the hosted payment page you send a guest with a payment link is English throughout today, so your cancellation policy and deposit notice appear there in English even when the booking form showed them in the guest’s language. The booking form, where the guest actually agrees to the terms, is translated.
Do I have to show a cancellation policy?
Only when you take payment. With guest payments off, No policy is available and the panel is hidden. With payments on, the option disappears and a rental with no policy starts on Strict, which you can change to anything else at any time. Nobody should hand over a card without terms in front of them.
Do children under the free age change what a guest pays?
No. That age only decides who counts toward Max total guests. Child pricing is a separate setting on the Pricing tab, and the two never affect each other.
Can I set different policies per rental?
Yes, and you already do. Every setting on this tab belongs to the one rental you have open. If you run a collection, each rental in it keeps its own guest limits, its own cancellation policy, and its own deposit; a collection only groups them for display and never copies settings between them.