--- title: "Toolkit: Guest Picker" description: "> Replaces the booking component's single \"Guests\" dropdown with a friendly Adults / Children / Pets picker, so guests tell you exactly who is coming and your pricing (pet fees, child rates) comes out right. --- ## What it does…" url: "https://homerunner.io/docs/toolkit-guest-picker/" updated: "2026-10-13" category: "Booking & Checkout" --- # Toolkit: Guest Picker > Replaces the booking component's single "Guests" dropdown with a friendly Adults / Children / Pets picker, so guests tell you exactly who is coming and your pricing (pet fees, child rates) comes out right. --- ## What it does Out of the box, the booking component asks for a single total guest count. That is a problem when your pricing depends on the mix: a pet fee, a different rate for children. Guest Picker fixes that. It swaps the plain "Guests" dropdown for a clean modal with separate stepper controls: - **Adults** (minimum 1) - **Children** - **Pets** Because the guest now tells you the real breakdown, your PMS can calculate the correct quote (for example, OwnerRez pet fees or Guesty child rates). The selections follow the guest through the whole flow: - The choices ride along in the page link, so sharing or deep-linking a property keeps the guest count intact. - On your property search page, the pets Yes/No choice becomes the same numeric stepper, and the guest's counts carry into the property links they click. - The checkout summary reads naturally, for example "2 Adults, 1 Child, 1 Pet" instead of "Guests: 4". - When pets are included, the breakdown is added to the reservation notes so your team sees it. Pets are handled per property: when a property does not allow pets, the Pets control is greyed out with a short note saying so, and the maximum for pet-friendly properties is read from your PMS sync (with an account-wide fallback you set). The picker also respects the property's limits from your PMS, so a guest cannot build a party your PMS would refuse to quote: - Adults and children together stop at the property's total guest count. - When your PMS reports a separate adult cap (currently OwnerRez), the Adults plus button stops there. Tapping it shows a short note such as "This property allows a maximum of 6 adults", and children can still fill the remaining places. A shared link that asks for more adults than the cap is trimmed to the cap. - The Pets plus button stops at the pet maximum in the same way, with a matching note. The pet fee stays in the quote and leaves the optional add-ons list. Some PMS setups, Guesty in particular, deliver the pet fee to the booking component as an optional add-on, which meant a guest could pick a pet and then switch the fee off. While Guest Picker is on and the Pets stepper drives the quote, that add-on toggle is hidden. The fee still appears as its own line in the price breakdown; the guest simply cannot untick it. This needs the current HomeRunner plugin; on older plugin versions the toggle stays visible. ## How to turn it on ### 1. Enable the module In the **HomeRunner Toolkit Hub**, switch on **Guest Picker**. ### 2. Set your pet rules Open the Guest Picker settings panel and configure the options below. Once enabled, every booking component on the site uses the new picker automatically. ## Settings | Setting | What it controls | | --- | --- | | **Maximum Pets (fallback)** | The account-wide cap on pets a guest can select, used when a property has no per-property maximum from the PMS. It is also the cap on the property search page, where no per-property number is available. Default 0 (no limit); accepts up to 99. | | **Pet Notice** | Whether a notice appears below the Pets row when a guest selects one or more pets. Default off. | | **Notice Text** | The wording of that notice (for example, your pet policy or fee reminder). Shown only when Pet Notice is on. Default: "Pet fees may apply and will be reflected in your quote." | Per-property pet allowance comes from the property's **pets** flag, and the per-property pet maximum and adult cap come from your PMS sync. The fallback above only applies where the PMS does not provide a pet number. There is no setting for the adult cap: the picker enforces it when your PMS reports one and otherwise leaves adults limited only by the total guest count. ## Tips - Guest Picker and [Searchbar Pro](/docs/toolkit-searchbar-pro/) share the same Adults / Children / Pets thinking, so a guest who sets their party size in the search bar carries it cleanly into the booking component. - If the Pets stepper is greyed out on a property, confirm the property is flagged as pet-friendly. The control only becomes active when pets are actually allowed. - If the Adults plus button stops below the property's sleeps figure, that is the PMS adult cap at work. If it stops at the wrong number, check the adult limit in your PMS and confirm the property has synced since you changed it. - If the pet fee still shows as an optional add-on toggle after you enable Guest Picker, update the HomeRunner plugin to the current version. - [Conditional Add-Ons](/docs/toolkit-conditional-add-ons/) hides add-ons per listing based on your rules (for example, hiding a pet fee on listings that are not pet-friendly). Guest Picker goes one step further for the pet fee itself: with the Pets stepper in charge, the toggle is hidden on every listing and the fee is applied from the pet count. - Use the Pet Notice text to set expectations early (deposit, weight limit, breed policy) before the guest reaches checkout. - Related personalization groundwork lives in [Guest Identity](/docs/toolkit-guest-identity/).