Room Capacities for children and infants

Hi ​@Andrew Hughes. Thanks for your query.

At the moment, Mews still does not support age‑based room capacity. All guests (adults, children, and infants) count toward the same capacity limit of a space, and there’s no way to say “max 4 adults, but up to 2 extra children/infants on top of that” in the system. Children and infants are not treated as “free” capacity in terms of occupancy validation.

What you can control today is:

• Total capacity and extra capacity per space category (all heads, regardless of age).

• Age categories and how they affect pricing and reporting (e.g. different prices or free infants), but not how capacity itself is calculated.

How this applies to your villa example

Your ideal rule:

• Max 4 adults,

• But allow up to 2 additional children/infants (so total “bodies” could be 6, but adults capped at 4).

What Mews can do today:

• You can set the villa’s capacity to 6 (for example, base capacity 4 + extra capacity 2).

• However, Mews will then allow any combination of 6 guests (e.g. 6 adults), because the system doesn’t distinguish between adults vs. children/infants for capacity purposes.

So unfortunately, there is currently no configuration that will technically enforce “max 4 adults, but 2 extra only if they’re children/infants” in the PMS or in the Mews booking engine.

Common workarounds properties use

While it’s a limitation, properties typically combine configuration + clear communication to get as close as possible:

1. Set capacity to the physical maximum

   • Configure the villa with capacity 6 (e.g. 4 base + 2 extra).

   • This ensures families like 4 adults + up to 2 children/infants can complete a booking.

2. Use age categories for pricing (not capacity)

   • Define age categories such as Infant, Child, Adult in Mews.

   • On your rates, use age category adjustments so that, for example:

     • Infants can be free,

     • Children can be cheaper than adults,

     • Extra adults can be charged at a higher supplement.

   • This does not stop 5–6 adults from booking, but it lets you price extra adults differently from children.

3. Make the “4 adults max” rule explicit in content & policies

   • In space descriptions, rate descriptions, and house rules, clearly state something like:

     “Villa sleeps up to 4 adults. Up to 2 additional occupants must be children/infants sharing existing bedding. Extra adults on request only.”

   • Many properties then handle edge cases operationally (e.g. contacting guests who book 5–6 adults, adjusting or refusing if it doesn’t respect house rules).

4. Channel manager / OTA side (if applicable)

   • Some OTAs let you define separate adult vs. child capacity on their side.

   • Capacity validation for online availability then happens primarily in the OTA/CRS, while Mews stores the reservation as sent.

   • However, on the Mews side it will still appear as “up to 6 guests” and Mews itself won’t block 5–6 adults once the booking exists.

Status of this as a feature

This is a known limitation and there is an open product idea to support age‑based room capacity, e.g. different limits for adults vs. children/infants per space category.

You’re very much describing the exact use case that idea targets (extra beds/cots for smaller children, but not extra adults). If you haven’t already, I’d strongly recommend adding your vote and use case details in our Product Ideas portal so Product can see how important this is to properties like yours.

Have a great day!
Yann

hi Yann

Thank you so much for the fast and thorough response, I really appreciate how clear you are and the specific work arounds you offered. 

To be honest though, these workarounds don’t cut it as it creates potential risk, reputational damage or labour cost which ever way you look at it.

An organisation such as Mews that prides itself on building solid technology and user experience simply shouldn’t accept that a hotel is reliant on a written description to tell the guests they cannot book something that indeed the system allows them to book.  Imagine how you would feel if you were the family booking to receive a call from a hotel saying, hey ‘i’m sorry but you can’t stay with us because you have too many adults and not enough babies...”

I’m not sure why the system was designed this way but it completely defies logic and is a significant deviation from how a hotel actually operates (it would be a tough argument for any developer or PM to say that a young child or infant requires the same bedding size as an adult).

There are also potential health and safety laws that are being breached here, as some jurisdictions may have capacity limits e.g. a villa is only allowed to have X guests + infants etc. 

As for the OTAs, I don’t think there should ever be a case where an OTA is given a privilege by being able to split the age categories as this does not line up with Mews enabling hotels to increase direct distribution.

For 2 years we did indeed manage this manually when guests asked for permission to add their baby which incurred more labour cost than having mews itself (think of the multi steps from client to staff and back to add a baby that could have been booked in the first place, whether chargeable or not). 

now i’ve been forced to pay for a channel manager and manage rates and avail outside of Mews which is crazy when i only had my own channel and 1 OTA on a direct connect. 

so Yann and team, what’s the solution?  is this on a road map for Mews or should community members that wish to differentiate between a baby and an adult have to find a new PMS?  

how many requests does the PM team need for this development to appear on a roadmap not just an ‘open product idea’?  

Time for logic to apply….

Andrew H

Hello,

We have also identified this as an issue. Having a “Total Occupancy” field and a “Max Adults” field in Mews is essential. These fields would help us better manage reservations and allow us to sell rooms according to our intended configuration.

For example, currently for rooms that allow 4 people but have a maximum of 2 adults, we are forced to either:

• Sell the room for a maximum of 2 people and only allow 4 guests upon request via phone, or

• Risk the room being booked for 4 adults, which is not the intended setup.

Implementing these fields would solve this problem and streamline our booking process.

We are also hoping for solution to this problem! 

Hello everyone,

I want to join the others by re-emphasizing that this is also a pressing issue for us!

All the best!