Registering Minors in Spain: Guest Report Rules by Age

A family with children walks into the apartment and check-in stalls: the baby carries no document, the fifteen-year-old does, and the form wants a “relationship” field nobody ever explained.

The slips here are not harmless. Registering a ten-year-old as if they were an adult forces you to invent a document number that does not exist, and forgetting a teenager’s parentesco leaves the communication incomplete even though you believe you filed it.

Royal Decree 933/2021 does not set up a separate regime for children. It draws two age lines, and everything else follows from those two.

The two age lines: fourteen and eighteen

The first sits at fourteen and decides who signs the report:

“Los partes de entrada para el uso de los servicios de hospedaje deberán ser firmados por toda persona mayor de catorce años que haga uso de los mismos, conforme al sistema y modelo que se establezca. En el caso de las personas menores de catorce años, sus datos serán proporcionados por la persona mayor de edad de la que vayan acompañados.”

Entry reports must be signed by every person over fourteen who uses the lodging services; for people under fourteen, their data is supplied by the adult of legal age accompanying them. Two consequences follow, and the second is the one most often missed. A fifteen-year-old signs their own report, not their father. And a twelve-year-old’s data is communicated: what changes is who supplies it, not whether it is on the record.

The second line is eighteen and it decides the parentesco. Annex I asks for it as soon as a minor in law travels, whether they are six or seventeen:

“o) Relación de parentesco entre los viajeros (en el caso de que alguno sea menor de edad).”

That is the relationship between the travellers, required whenever one of them is under 18. Put together, the two lines give three bands:

One fair question remains: what about someone who has just turned fourteen. The wording of article 4.2 settles it, splitting the group at the same point from both sides. The report is signed by “toda persona mayor de catorce años”, and the route where an adult supplies the data is reserved for people under fourteen. Anyone who has reached that birthday drops out of the second group, so they sign for themselves from the day of the birthday. There is no in-between band where collecting both signatures just in case is the safer course.

The same sentence does leave something open, and it is worth knowing about. Article 4.2 requires that signature “conforme al sistema y modelo que se establezca”, under the system and model to be established, and neither that system nor that model has ever been published. There is therefore no official signature format for the entry report: whatever the accommodation puts in place counts, on paper or inside its digital check-in. What does not depend on that pending rule is the age, which the decree fixes itself.

Children under 14: the accompanying adult supplies their data

Children below fourteen do not drop off the record. Article 5.1 says the opposite outright:

“Los sujetos obligados habrán de llevar un registro informático en el que consten los datos que se relacionan en los anexos I y II, en función de la actividad que desarrollen, incluidos, en su caso, los datos de las personas menores de catorce años.”

The register must hold the Annex data, “including, where applicable, the data of people under fourteen years of age”. So the child has a line of their own, and the adult they travel with fills it in. Annex I publishes no per-age field list, so what remains is the minimum a child can supply. In our own filings, an under-14’s line carries first and last names, date of birth, habitual residence and the relationship to the adult declaring them, with the document fields left out. The Ministry accepts it that way.

Leaving a field out is not the same as sending it blank. An empty document field, added to “fill the gap”, makes the Ministry reject the whole batch, not just the child’s line.

Your side of it is short: the adult declares each child’s data and the relationship linking them, and their signature covers the children they declared.

Do I have to register a baby on the guest report?

Yes. Ages 0 to 13 are handled the same way throughout, so a three-month-old is on the record exactly like a ten-year-old, both supplied by the accompanying adult and neither one signing.

Why are children under 14 not asked for ID or a signature?

Two reasons, and both are written down:

1. The signature is ruled out by article 4.2 itself, which requires it from fourteen and not before.
2. The DNI is not mandatory until fourteen, under article 4.2 of Royal Decree 255/2025, which replaced 1553/2005 on 2 April 2025⁴.

Below that age many Spanish children hold no document at all to show, and oversight runs through the adult already identified on the report.

Ages 14 to 17: full registration and their own signature

From fourteen to seventeen the record is that of any adult, with one difference: they are still minors in law, so their parentesco to an accompanying adult on the same reservation must be declared.

The signature is what separates them from under-14s. In this band the teenager signs it themselves, even when travelling with their parents and even when their mother is the reservation holder.

The two ages are worth keeping apart, because they get mixed up daily: a sixteen-year-old guest is still a minor in law, but signs the guest report like anyone else. The signature line sits at fourteen, not at eighteen.

Which ID documents SES.HOSPEDAJES accepts for a minor

Annex I names three document types, and only three: DNI, passport and TIE². The Ministry widens that list in its FAQ:

“El DNI para los ciudadanos españoles (obligatorio para las personas mayores de 14 años), Documento de Identidad para los ciudadanos comunitarios y PASAPORTE para las personas extranjeras.”

The DNI for Spanish citizens, mandatory from fourteen; a national identity card for EU citizens; a passport for other foreign nationals. At your front desk that reads as:

• DNI for a Spanish minor, which also requires the second surname and the support number, printed on the front of the card.
• TIE for a foreign minor resident in Spain, the card that carries the NIE, and which also requires the second surname.
• Passport for a non-resident foreign minor.
• National identity card for a minor from another EU country. It is not on the Annex list, but FAQ question 27 accepts it.

That national card is filed under the type OTRO, and a national card from outside the EU goes the same way.

If the minor presents the DNI through MiDNI, the digital DNI, it carries the same validity as the physical card from April 2026. The full breakdown of the acronyms is in NIE, TIE, NIF and DNI.

Minor without an ID document: how to register in SES.HOSPEDAJES

The typical case is a foreign fifteen-year-old who arrives with a family book and no document in their own name. In order of preference:

1. Use the passport if they have one, even if they have not turned fourteen in their country.
2. Use the national ID document from the country of origin, if it is an official individual ID.
3. If neither exists, record in the reservation itself the accompanying adult’s document and the relationship between them.

The family book (libro de familia) is not a personal ID for the minor as far as the report goes. It proves a family relationship; it does not identify anyone.

What to put in the parentesco field for a minor

Parentesco is the family or guardianship relationship between the minor and the accompanying adult. The field is not free text. These are the relationships it takes in our filings:

• Father / Mother
• Guardian
• Grandfather / Grandmother
• Uncle / Aunt
• Brother / Sister
• Other

What the form has to force is the link: it is not enough to say the child “is travelling with an adult”, you have to say which of the adults on the reservation.

A 16-year-old with their own DNI: is parentesco still required?

Yes. As long as the guest is a minor in law (until the day before they turn eighteen), declaring the relationship is mandatory. It does not matter that they have their own DNI and travel without their parents: you still indicate the relationship to the adult listed on the same reservation.

A minor travelling without a direct relative: trips and camps

School trips, summer camps and youth sports teams arrive with a monitor, a teacher or a group leader who is related to nobody. The Ministry settles it like this:

“Sí, debiendo consignar el título que legitima la responsabilidad de la persona mayor de edad con las que son menores de edad. (tutor, profesor, monitor deportivo, entre otros).”

Yes, provided you record the title that grounds the adult’s responsibility for the minors: guardian, teacher, sports coach, “among others”. That last phrase is the useful part, because the list is open, and what gets recorded is the title under which that adult answers for the group. On the report it becomes “guardian” or “other”, depending on the documentation they bring.

If the minor travels alone, admission is no longer a guest-report matter: it depends on your regional tourism rules and on your own booking conditions.

From 18: no parentesco and no companion required

Once eighteen, registration is identical to that of any adult: full data, no relationship declared, no mandatory companion. The signature is the one thing that does not change that day, because the guest has been signing their own report since fourteen.

A minor is never the reservation holder

The first registered guest of each reservation is, by convention, the holder: the person who contracts the accommodation and bears responsibility for the rest of the guests’ data being correct. That slot is always filled by someone of legal age, including when everyone else on the booking is a child.

A family’s guest report is due 24 hours after check-in

The children’s data comes from the adult, but the clock is the same for the whole booking. Article 6.3.b) orders the traveller data transmitted “immediately, and in any case within a period not exceeding 24 hours”, counted from the start of the contracted services⁷. A family checking in on Friday at six in the evening has its report, adults and children in the same communication, by six on Saturday.

There is a second clock in the same article, the one in letter a), which starts when the booking is made or cancelled. That one is not the report’s: it belongs to the reserva de hospedaje, a separate communication carrying the contract and the payment, which on a platform sale does not come from your account. Which one is due when is set out in reserva de hospedaje or parte de viajeros.

With a large family the temptation is to wait for the last child’s document and send everything together on Monday. It does not pay off: filing late and never filing are both sanctioned, and the second band is the expensive one.

A family booking through Booking or Airbnb: who reports what

A family’s booking almost never comes through your own site. It comes through a platform, and the channel splits the work in a way worth being clear about before the first check-in of the summer.

What the platform hands you is a guest count, not a list of travellers: “four adults and two children”, with no names, no dates of birth and no relationship. That figure is not a report and it will not build one. The report is always the accommodation’s, and it carries one person block per guest sleeping there, children included, with the fields their age calls for: the ones in the table above.

The other half is not yours. The booking communication, the one carrying the contract and the payment, falls to the platform when the sale came through it. Article 2.1.d) counts among lodging activities that of digital platforms intermediating over the internet and offering services in Spain, “whether or not they provide the underlying service being mediated”, and paragraph 3 of the same article calls an obliged subject anyone who carries out or intermediates in those activities⁸. The Ministry settles the split where there is a chain of intermediaries: the one to report is “aquel que mantiene una relación contractual directa y final con el cliente”, the party holding a direct and final contractual relationship with the client⁹.

On a direct sale both communications are yours. On a platform sale, only the report.

Common mistakes when registering minors

After processing thousands of check-ins, these are the ones that come up most.

1. Registering a minor under 14 as an adult

Out of habit, some operators fill in the same form for every traveller, young children included. The problem is not one of form: the child ends up being asked for a document number they do not have, and the report goes out with either an invented value or a blank field that kills the filing.

Fix: let the accompanying adult declare the child, with their name, date of birth and relationship, and keep the document fields out of the filing instead of sending them empty.

2. Forgetting parentesco for a guest under 18

Many people believe the relationship is only asked for from fourteen onwards. It is the other way round: Annex I triggers it as soon as one of the travellers is a minor in law, so a family with a six-year-old fails on exactly this.

The cost is not just the validation notice. While the filing is rejected, the stay remains uncommunicated, and there article 8 divides the ground: a late communication is a minor infringement under 8.3.b), and never communicating it is a serious one under 8.2.b)¹⁰. Organic Law 4/2015 puts a price on each, 100 to 600 euros for minor infringements and 601 to 30,000 for serious ones¹¹.

Fix: require the relationship whenever the guest’s date of birth is less than eighteen years ago, not only in the fourteen-to-seventeen band.

3. Confusing DNI and support number

The support number is an additional identifier on the Spanish DNI, an alphanumeric string in the shape “AAA123456”. It is different from the DNI number, and Annex I asks for it in its own letter f)², so a DNI without it goes out incomplete.

Fix: ask for it in a separate field, with a visual example of where it appears on the document.

4. Filing a DNI or NIE without the second surname

Spanish documents always have two surnames. If the form does not require the second one and the report goes out with a single surname, validation fails.

Fix: make the “second surname” field mandatory whenever the document type is DNI or NIE.

Minors’ data: only what the guest report requires

GDPR and the Spanish LOPDGDD give minors’ data enhanced protection, and the legal basis for processing in the guest report is not consent: it is compliance with a legal obligation, the one RD 933/2021 imposes. That sets the limit. The obligation covers the data the rule asks for, and not one field more.

In practice:

• Do not ask for a document or a signature below fourteen. Article 4.2 puts that data in the hands of the accompanying adult.
• Do not file copies of documents belonging to people who are not staying. The report identifies whoever sleeps there.
• Restrict access to the data to authorised accommodation staff.
• Delete or anonymise once the three years set by article 5.3 have passed.

And in the other band, the same criterion in reverse: from fourteen to seventeen the signature belongs to the minor. Asking a father to sign his sixteen-year-old’s report adds no guarantee, it swaps the signature the rule requires for one it never asked for.

FAQ

Do children have to be registered on the guest report in Spain? Yes, children do have to be registered, and age changes the how rather than the whether. Article 5.1 of RD 933/2021 expressly includes the data of children under fourteen, so they are on the record; what is not asked of them is a signature or a document of their own, because the adult they travel with supplies their data. From 14 to 17 the record is complete and the minor signs it themselves. The relationship to an adult on the same booking is declared for any guest under 18, whatever their age, because Annex I asks for it as soon as one of the travellers is a minor. From 18, the standard adult regime applies.

Which ID is valid for a minor aged 14 to 17? The IDs valid for a minor aged 14 to 17 are a DNI (the support number and second surname are also required), a TIE with its NIE, a passport, or an official ID document from the country of origin. The family book does not work as identification: it proves a family relationship, but it does not identify the minor. And if the minor presents the DNI through MiDNI, it carries the same validity as the physical card from April 2026.

Who signs the guest report for a minor? The guest report for a minor is signed by the minor themselves from age 14, not by the adult accompanying them: article 4.2 of RD 933/2021 requires the entry report to be signed by every person over fourteen who uses the accommodation, and reserves the adult-supplied route for people under fourteen. Anyone who has reached fourteen is therefore on the signing side. Below that age the minor does not sign, and their data comes from the adult they are travelling with, whose signature covers them. Be careful with the shortcut of reading “minor” as “does not sign”: a 16-year-old guest is a minor in law and signs their report.

Do I need parental authorisation to accommodate a minor in Spain? Parental authorisation is not something RD 933/2021 requires: it governs the guest report, not the conditions for admitting a guest. That side is governed by the minor’s legal capacity and, where applicable, by your region’s tourism rules and your own house conditions. If you decide to ask for it, it is a condition of yours and it does not travel under the cover of the report: whatever you collect that way you process on your own responsibility, not under the decree’s legal obligation. So ask for the minimum and put it in your booking conditions, so nobody is surprised at check-in. If you are unsure about your region, confirm it against its tourism regulations.

Can a minor book and stay alone in Spain? For a minor, booking and staying alone are two separate things, worth keeping apart. For the report, a guest aged 14 to 17 is registered like any other, with complete data and their own signature. For the booking, an unemancipated minor has limited capacity to contract, so the contract is normally signed by an adult. Again, that is a matter of civil law and house policy, not of RD 933/2021. If you do accept unaccompanied minors, put it in writing in your conditions.

What relationship do I declare on a school trip or summer camp? On a school trip or summer camp you declare the relationship of the adult acting as temporary guardian. When the minor is not travelling with a direct relative, that companion is usually the monitor, teacher or group leader, and the Ministry asks you to record the title under which that adult answers for them. On the report it becomes “guardian” or “other”, depending on the documentation provided, and it must be linked to the specific adult listed on the same reservation.

When is the guest report for a family with children due? The guest report for a family with children is due within 24 hours of the stay starting, exactly as for any other guest: article 6.3 of RD 933/2021 opens no separate deadline just because there are minors on the booking. Every occupant goes in the same communication, and the data of the under-14s comes from the adult accompanying them. The other 24-hour deadline in that article, the one starting when the booking is made or cancelled, belongs to the reserva de hospedaje, a separate communication that on a platform sale falls to the platform.

Does a Booking or Airbnb reservation count as the guest report? A Booking or Airbnb reservation does not count as the guest report. What the platform hands you is a guest count, “two adults and two children”, not each person’s identity, and the report needs one person block per occupant with the Annex I fields. The report is always the accommodation’s. What does fall to the platform, when the sale came through it, is the reserva de hospedaje, the communication carrying the contract and the payment.

How RegistroViajero handles minors in the guest report

At RegistroViajero the minor registration flow comes ready out of the box.

• Automatic detection by age: the form reads the date of birth and adapts the required fields in real time.
• A line of its own for every under-14: the adult they travel with declares their data, and that adult’s signature covers the children they declared.
• Relationship required for any guest under eighteen, linked to the specific accompanying adult on the reservation.
• Chained validations: if you choose DNI, it asks for the second surname and the support number; if you choose passport, it does not.
• Signature blocked below fourteen, as article 4.2 requires.
• Automatic deletion after three years, the period set by article 5.3 of RD 933/2021.

You can get more context in what RD 933/2021 requires, how to automate guest registration when family groups repeat, the penalties provided for by the law, and how to obtain SES.HOSPEDAJES credentials.

If you manage an accommodation with high family turnover, see how RegistroViajero works.

This article is informational. For specific cases (unaccompanied minors, judicial guardianship, emergency accommodation, etc.), consult your legal advisor or the competent authority.