Children policies

Learn how to retrieve and interpret child-related policies, including age restrictions, child rates, free stays, cots, and extra beds.

Properties can define policies that affect whether children can stay and how their stay is priced.

Use the Demand API to:

• Check property-level age restrictions.
• Retrieve child-rate information for available products.
• Identify age ranges where children stay free of charge.
• Retrieve cot and extra-bed policies and room-level limits.

Children are guests aged from 0 to 17. When searching for accommodation, always provide each child's actual age so that the API can return the applicable availability and pricing.

Use different endpoints depending on the information you need.

Include the complete guest group when calling /accommodations/search or /accommodations/availability.

Use:

• guests.number_of_adults — Total number of adults.
• guests.children — Ages of all children.
• guests.number_of_rooms — Number of rooms required.
• guests.allocation — Requested distribution of adults and children across rooms, when applicable.

For example:

{
  "guests": {
    "number_of_adults": 2,
    "children": [2, 10],
    "number_of_rooms": 1
  }
}

Always preserve children's actual ages throughout the booking flow.

For information about allocating guests across rooms, see the Occupancy & allocation guide.

Properties can restrict the ages of guests who are allowed to stay.

Use policies.minimum_guest_age from /accommodations/details to determine the minimum age allowed at the property.

For example:

{
  "policies": {
    "minimum_guest_age": 6
  }
}

In this example, guests younger than 6 are not allowed to stay.

Interpret minimum_guest_age as follows:

A property with minimum_guest_age set to 18 or higher does not allow children aged 0–17.

Do not use maximum_occupancy.children from /accommodations/availability to determine whether a property is adults-only.

In particular, maximum_occupancy.children: null is not a reliable indicator that children are prohibited.

For practical examples covering adults-only properties and other minimum guest ages, see the Occupancy and allocation use cases.

Child rates are pricing rules that apply to children based on criteria such as their age and the product configuration.

Call /accommodations/availability with the complete guest group to retrieve current products and prices.

An available product can return child-rate information in maximum_occupancy.children:

{
  "maximum_occupancy": {
    "adults": 2,
    "children": [
      {
        "total": 1,
        "from_age": 0,
        "to_age": 5,
        "free_stay": true
      },
      {
        "total": 1,
        "from_age": 6,
        "to_age": 12,
        "free_stay": false
      }
    ],
    "total": 4
  }
}

For each children entry:

Both from_age and to_age are inclusive.

An available product can return:

{
  "maximum_occupancy": {
    "adults": 2,
    "children": null,
    "total": 4
  }
}

children: null means that no applicable child-rate information is returned for the product.

This value alone does not indicate:

• Whether children are allowed at the property.
• Whether the requested children can be accommodated in the room.
• That you should convert the children to adults in subsequent requests.

If you need to determine whether the requested children can be accommodated, use the product's room ID to retrieve the corresponding room from /accommodations/details and check its occupancy limits.

In version 3.3, use the age-specific child occupancy rules in rooms[].maximum_occupancy.

For the complete 3.2 and 3.3 fitting logic, see the Occupancy & allocation guide.

free_stay indicates whether children covered by a child-rate rule stay free of charge.

For example:

{
  "maximum_occupancy": {
    "children": [
      {
        "total": 1,
        "from_age": 0,
        "to_age": 5,
        "free_stay": true
      }
    ]
  }
}

In this example:

• The rule applies to children aged 0–5, inclusive.
• Up to one child can use the rule.
• free_stay: true indicates that a child covered by the rule stays free of charge.

The returned product price already accounts for the applicable child pricing. Do not subtract the child's price or recalculate the product total yourself.

Cots and extra beds have separate policy and room-level information.

Use /accommodations/details to retrieve:

• Property-level age and pricing rules through policies.cots_and_extra_beds.
• Room-level limits through rooms[].cots_and_extra_beds.

Request both policies and rooms:

{
  "accommodations": [27635],
  "extras": [
    "policies",
    "rooms"
  ]
}

policies.cots_and_extra_beds describes the age and pricing rules that apply to cots and extra beds.

For example:

{
  "policies": {
    "cots_and_extra_beds": [
      {
        "age": {
          "from": 0,
          "to": 2
        },
        "mode": "per_night",
        "price": 0,
        "type": "cot"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Use:

The age interval is inclusive.

rooms[].cots_and_extra_beds describes how many cots and extra beds can be added to a particular room.

For example:

{
  "rooms": [
    {
      "id": "2763504",
      "cots_and_extra_beds": {
        "are_allowed_together": false,
        "maximum_number_of_cots": 1,
        "maximum_number_of_extra_beds": 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

Use:

• maximum_number_of_cots — Maximum number of cots that can be added to the room.
• maximum_number_of_extra_beds — Maximum number of extra beds that can be added to the room.
• are_allowed_together — Whether cots and extra beds can be placed in the room at the same time, up to their respective limits.

Cot and extra-bed information is separate from the room's standard occupancy configuration.

When determining whether a guest group can be accommodated:

1. Check the room's maximum_occupancy.
2. Check the applicable cot or extra-bed policy.
3. Check the room-level cot and extra-bed limits.
4. Validate the selected product and exact guest allocation using /orders/preview before creating the order.

For worked examples, see Handle cots and extra beds.

Use the child-policy information returned by the API to provide travellers with relevant information about their stay.

Depending on the returned data, you can display:

• Applicable child age ranges.
• Whether children within an age range stay free.
• Cot and extra-bed availability.
• Cot and extra-bed charges.
• Property minimum guest age or other relevant age restrictions.

Always display the product price returned by the API. Child-rate and free-stay rules are already reflected in the returned price.

When handling a search that includes children:

1. Send each child's actual age in /accommodations/search.
2. Check minimum_guest_age from /accommodations/details when property age restrictions are relevant to your integration.
3. Call /accommodations/availability for the selected accommodation using the complete guest group.
4. Use maximum_occupancy.children to interpret the applicable child-rate information for each product.
5. Use free_stay to identify child-rate bands where children stay free of charge.
6. When you need to determine whether the guest group fits a particular room, use the room occupancy information from /accommodations/details.
7. Retrieve policies.cots_and_extra_beds and rooms[].cots_and_extra_beds when cot or extra-bed information is relevant.
8. Use /orders/preview to validate the exact product and guest allocation before creating the order.

• Always provide children's actual ages in search, availability and preview requests.
• Keep child pricing rules separate from room occupancy rules.
• Do not use maximum_occupancy.children from /accommodations/availability alone to determine whether children fit the room.
• Do not interpret children: null as confirmation that children are prohibited or should be treated as adults.
• Use minimum_guest_age to determine property-level age restrictions.
• Use the product prices returned by the API rather than calculating child prices yourself.
• Treat cot and extra-bed policies separately from standard room occupancy.
• Validate the final product and guest allocation using /orders/preview.