Form C & FRRO Registration: A Guide for Indian Hosts

If you host a foreign guest anywhere in India — through Airbnb, as a homestay, or a hotel — you must report them to the FRRO within 24 hours of arrival using Form C. It is the accommodation provider's legal duty, not Airbnb's, and it applies to every foreign national regardless of how long they stay. This guide covers who must file, exactly what Form C asks for, the penalties for skipping it, and how to file it in minutes.

What is Form C?

Form C is the report an accommodation provider in India submits to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) for each foreign guest they host. It records who the guest is, their passport and visa details, and where and when they are staying. It is filed online through the FRRO portal at indianfrro.gov.in.

The requirement comes from the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939 and Rule 14 of the Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1992, administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs. In short: the government wants to know which foreign nationals are staying where, and the host is the one who tells them.

Who has to file Form C?

Anyone who provides accommodation to a foreign national in India. The rules name a broad set of providers, and enforcement treats short-term rentals the same as hotels:

• Hotels, guest houses, resorts and lodges
• Airbnb hosts and other short-term rental operators
• Homestays, B&Bs and serviced apartments
• Dharamshalas and individual houses hosting a foreign guest

Form C is only for foreign guests. You do not file it for Indian citizens — they are covered by your ordinary guest register. But for every foreign national, filing is mandatory, whether they booked through Airbnb, Booking.com, or messaged you directly.

The 24-hour deadline

Form C must be submitted within 24 hours of the guest's arrival at your property. This is the single most-missed rule: hosts often collect the passport at check-in and then forget to file until it is too late. The clock starts when the guest arrives, not when they booked.

Registering your property on the FRRO portal

Before you can file a single Form C, you need an accommodation login on the FRRO portal. This is a one-time setup:

1. Go to the FRRO Form C portal at indianfrro.gov.in/frro/FormC and choose to register as an accommodation provider.
2. Enter your property details — name, full address, city, state and PIN code — and your contact information.
3. Submit the registration and wait for your login to be approved. Once it is, you sign in and file Form C for each foreign guest from the same portal.

Keep your accommodation address details handy — the portal asks for them on every filing under the “Address in India” block.

What information Form C asks for

The online Form C is long. For each foreign guest you enter the following (this list is mapped field-for-field from the live portal):

Notably, the online Form C does notask for a flight number — that field appears on some hotels' own paper arrival registers, but not on the FRRO portal.

OCI, PIO and special cases

The portal has a “Special Category” dropdown for guests who aren't ordinary tourists — the most common being OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) and PIO(Person of Indian Origin) card holders. If your guest holds an OCI card, select OCI rather than leaving it as “Others”; their visa section is filled from the OCI card details. When in doubt, match exactly what is printed on the guest's passport and visa.

Note that Form C (the host's report) is separate from FRRO self-registration, which is a different rule that applies to foreigners staying in India longer than 180 days on certain visas. Form C is required for every foreign guest no matter how short the stay.

What happens if you don't file

Non-compliance is not a paperwork slap on the wrist. Failing to report a foreign guest is an offence under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, which can carry imprisonment of up to five years and a fine. Earlier the penalty for accommodation providers was a small fixed fine; it has since been made far more serious.

This is not theoretical — there have been documented cases of hotel staff and hosts facing police action for not filing Form C. For a host running several listings, the safe assumption is simple: every foreign guest, filed within 24 hours, every time.

How to file Form C fast

Filing manually means logging into the portal, retyping every field from the guest's passport and visa, and doing it against a 24-hour clock. Across multiple listings that is a real burden. Two things make it painless:

• Collect everything once, upfront. Ask the guest for their passport, visa and details at check-in — not the moment you need to file. A single check-in link that captures every Form C field means you are never chasing a passport photo at 11pm.
• Don't retype into the portal. The fields are always the same, so filling them by hand every time is wasted effort. Autofilling the portal from data you already have turns a 15-minute job into a click.

This is exactly what Checkinator does: one guest check-in link collects every Form C field and document, a deadline tracker warns you inside the 24-hour window, and a browser extension fills the FRRO portal for you — you just solve the captcha and submit. It was built by a Delhi Airbnb Superhost who files these every week.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939 — National Portal of India
• Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1992 — Ministry of Home Affairs
• Section 14, The Foreigners Act, 1946
• Airbnb Help Centre — Foreigner registration (FRRO) for hosts in India

This guide is general information for hosts, not legal advice. Rules and penalties can change — check the official FRRO portal and MHA sources above for the current position.