How to File Form C (FRRO) for Your Homestay: 2026 Guide

By Sachin

Running a short-term rental like a business · November 3, 2026 · 9 min read

How to File Form C (FRRO) for Your Homestay: 2026 Guide

If you run a homestay or an Airbnb in India, you have to report every foreign guest to the Bureau of Immigration within 24 hours of their arrival. For years that report was called Form C, and most hosts still call it that. Since the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 came into force on 1 September 2025, its official name is Form III. It's the same job on the same e-FRRO portal at indianfrro.gov.in, and it now covers OCI cardholders as well.

This guide covers the practical part: who has to file, how to register your homestay on e-FRRO, what the form asks for, how to file it step by step, and the mistakes that make hosts late. For the legal background and the state-level homestay rules, read our companion piece, India's guest registration rules are tightening.

Form C or Form III: which one do you file?

They are the same form. The old Form C came from the Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1992. The new Form III comes from Rule 17 of the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025. The e-FRRO login page now refers to "Form III (Form C)", the government's own notices still say "C-Form", and you file it in the same place either way.

What changed is the scope. The portal now says that OCI cardholders, who used to be exempt, must be reported too. So if a guest with an OCI card stays at your homestay, you file for them, even though they don't register with the FRRO themselves.

Who has to file Form C for a homestay

The duty sits with whoever provides the accommodation, not with the booking platform and not with the guest. In practice that means:

Homestays, guest houses, B&Bs and farm stays, registered with the state or not
Airbnb and short-term rental hosts, whether you rent a room or a whole flat
Hotels, lodges, hostels and resorts
Landlords renting to a foreign tenant

Airbnb's own help centre for India says any host who puts up a foreign guest for payment must submit the form, even for a stay of a few hours. If the guest is a foreign national or an OCI cardholder and they sleep at your property, assume you have to file.

Airbnb, Booking.com and the other platforms don't file it for you. They also don't pass you the passport or visa details the form needs, so you have to collect those yourself.

Step 1: Register your homestay on e-FRRO (one time)

You can't file anything until your property has its own accommodation login. This is separate from any e-FRRO account a foreign guest might create for their own visa registration.

Go to the Form C / Form III section of indianfrro.gov.in and choose Sign Up.
Pick the right category. The portal treats commercial premises (hotels, guest houses, homestays) differently from individual homes.
Fill in your details and the property's: owner or manager name, full address, phone and email, and the number of rooms.
Activate the account. This is where the categories differ:
- Hotels, guest houses and commercial homestays: a December 2025 Goa government notice explains that you print the application, sign it, stamp it with your seal and take it to the FRRO office, which then approves your user ID. Airbnb's guidance adds that commercial premises should bring property ownership details and the licence to operate. Depending on the local office, you may be able to send the documents by post or courier instead.
- Individual homes: the same notice describes an OTP-based activation. You submit the registration form, the system sends a one-time password to the mobile number you gave, and you enter it to activate your login. There's no visit to the FRRO for approval. Your local office can still ask for address proof, such as utility bills, a property tax receipt, or a sale deed or rent agreement in your name.

Do this before your first foreign guest is booked. Approval for commercial premises can take days, and the 24-hour clock doesn't pause while you wait. The portal also forces a password change every 30 days, so keep the login somewhere your team can find it.

What details Form C asks for

The form has barely changed over the years. Expect to provide:

About the guest

Full name, date of birth and nationality
Permanent address in their home country
Address or reference in India, and an Indian contact number
Passport number, place and date of issue, and expiry
Visa number, type, place and date of issue, and expiry, or OCI card details for an OCI cardholder
Whether they are employed in India

About the trip and the stay

Where they arrived from and their date of arrival in India
Date and time of arrival at your property
Intended length of stay, in days
Purpose of visit (leisure, business, visiting family, medical and so on)
Next destination

Uploads

The passport photo page
The visa page (or e-visa approval)
A recent photo of the guest. The portal sets small file-size limits, so resize scans and photos before you start.

The field you can't fill without the guest is usually the one that holds you up: the visa number, the arrival date in India or the next destination. Every one of them can be collected days before check-in.

Step 2: File the form for each guest

Once your login is active, filing for a guest takes a few minutes if the data is ready:

Log in to e-FRRO with your accommodation user ID.
Start a new Form C / Form III. Each foreign guest needs their own form, including every member of a couple, family or tour group.
Enter the guest and stay details from the list above, exactly as they appear on the passport and visa.
Upload the passport, visa and photo files.
Submit and save the acknowledgement or application number the portal gives you. Rule 17 expects you to keep arrival and departure records for at least a year.
Report the departure when the guest checks out, using the check-out entry on the portal. Treat this as a 24-hour task as well.

If the portal is down or you have no connectivity, don't simply wait. Airbnb's guidance is to tell the local FRRO, or the Superintendent of Police where there's no FRRO, and it is clear that no internet is not an acceptable excuse when there are other ways to report.

The 24-hour clock

The deadline runs from the guest's arrival at your property, not from the booking and not from the next working day. That one detail causes most late filings:

A guest who arrives at 11pm on Saturday has to be filed by 11pm on Sunday. "The manager does these on Monday" is late every weekend.
If you don't know a guest is foreign until they're at the door, you lose the hours you'd have used to collect their details.
If a guest checks out before you get round to it, you still owe the filing, and the departure entry too.

A December 2025 Goa government notice put the penalty for not reporting a foreign guest at ₹50,000 in each case under Section 8 of the 2025 Act. That's a strong reason to build a routine that doesn't depend on someone remembering.

Common mistakes homestay hosts make

Not filing for OCI cardholders. They used to be exempt and now they aren't. A guest with an Indian name and an OCI card is reportable.
One form for the whole booking. Each foreign guest needs their own form. A family of four means four forms.
Filing for the booker, not the guests. The person who paid may not be the person staying. File for whoever actually stays.
Waiting for the weekly admin day. The deadline is 24 hours from arrival.
Typing the details by hand from a blurry WhatsApp photo. One wrong digit in a passport or visa number creates a record you'll have to fix later.
Forgetting the departure entry. The check-out matters as much as the arrival.
Registering only when the first foreign guest turns up. Commercial premises need FRRO approval of the user ID, and that takes time.
Leaving passport scans in chat apps and email. You need the details to file, but you don't need copies of foreign guests' passports sitting in your phone's backup.

How to get the data ready before the guest arrives

The hosts who never miss a filing do the same thing: they gather what the form needs when the booking is confirmed, not at the door.

Ask before arrival. Tell guests in your listing and your pre-arrival message that foreign nationals and OCI cardholders must be reported to the government, and ask for their arrival date in India, where they're arriving from and their next destination. Most guests answer in a minute when you ask while they're still planning, and very few want to when they've just arrived late at night.

Verify identity with the booking, not at check-in. In SympleHost, the QID integration sends a guest ID verification request out with the booking. The guest verifies on their phone, and the verification status appears on the booking, so you know days ahead who has verified and who hasn't. The documents stay with QID, and only masked metadata reaches SympleHost, so passport images don't end up in your systems.

See who has actually arrived. The booking card in SympleHost lets your staff mark each guest as arrived. The 24-hour clock starts at arrival, so this is the moment that matters, and the team can see it without a phone call.

Open the form from the booking. The same booking card has a Fill Form-C link that opens the government's Form C page on e-FRRO. You still log in and submit the form yourself. SympleHost doesn't file Form C or Form III for you and isn't connected to the FRRO system. What it does is get the guest verified before they arrive, show you who has arrived, and put the portal one click away from the booking.

Put together, your routine looks like this: the booking is confirmed, the guest verifies, you know before arrival that they're foreign, staff mark them arrived, and someone files from the booking the same day.

(Immigration rules and portal screens change. Confirm the current process on indianfrro.gov.in or with your local FRRO, and treat this as practical guidance rather than legal advice.)

Frequently asked questions

Is Form C still required in 2026? Yes, under a new name. Since the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 came into force on 1 September 2025, Form C is officially Form III under Rule 17 of the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025. You still file it on the e-FRRO portal within 24 hours of a foreign guest's arrival, and it now covers OCI cardholders too.

Do I need Form C for an Airbnb guest in India? Yes, if the guest is a foreign national or an OCI cardholder. The duty belongs to the accommodation provider, which is you, not Airbnb. Booking platforms don't file the form or pass on the passport and visa details it needs.

How do I register my homestay on e-FRRO? Sign up on the Form C / Form III module at indianfrro.gov.in under the right category. Hotels, guest houses and commercial homestays usually submit a signed, sealed printout and their licence to the local FRRO, which approves the user ID. Individual homes can activate their login with a one-time password sent to the owner's mobile.

What documents do I need to file Form C for a guest? The guest's passport and visa details (or OCI card details), their arrival and travel details, and uploads of the passport photo page, the visa and a recent photo. Collect these when the booking is confirmed so you aren't chasing them on arrival night.

Do I have to file a separate Form C for each guest? Yes. Every foreign guest needs their own form, including children and every member of a group. You should also record each guest's departure on the portal when they check out.

Does SympleHost file Form C for me? No. SympleHost doesn't submit Form C or Form III and isn't connected to the FRRO system. It sends a QID verification request with the booking so the guest verifies before arrival, shows the verification status and who has arrived on the booking, and gives you a link that opens the Form C page on e-FRRO. You submit the form yourself.

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