How do you choose accommodation for a group?

Start with the non-negotiables: real beds for everyone, rooms for children, access needs, location and a budget ceiling. Shortlist three to five stays that meet them, compare each on the same checklist, including the total price with fees and the cancellation terms, then hold a short vote with a clear deadline and book the winner straight away.

What does 'sleeps 8' mean on a holiday rental?

It is the most people the listing says can stay, and it often counts sofa beds, bunks and shared double beds. Count the real beds room by room and check who would share which bed. A place that sleeps eight may only have proper beds for six.

How do you decide who gets which bedroom on a group trip?

Agree it before you book. Start with fixed needs: young children next to their parents, a ground-floor room for anyone who struggles with stairs. Then match the rest to how you split the cost: whoever takes the best room with its own bathroom pays more, or the rooms are drawn by lot if everyone pays the same.

How long should a group take to choose a holiday home?

Close the shortlist on a set day, then give the vote two or three days, with a deadline that has a day and a time. Good listings get booked by other groups, so a vote that runs for a week often ends with the winner no longer available.

Should you split a holiday rental per person or per room?

Per person is simplest when the rooms are similar. Split per room or per household when the rooms differ a lot, such as a family of four in one room and a couple in a suite with its own bathroom. Agree the rule before anyone books, not after.

How to choose where to stay as a group

Choosing where to stay is the decision that turns a group trip from an idea into something real. It is also where groups get stuck the longest. Someone posts a villa with a pool, someone else posts a cheaper flat, a third person asks about parking, and two days later the villa is gone. The links scroll away, nobody compared them on the same terms, and the person organising ends up picking one and hoping.

This guide is a method for getting four to ten people from a pile of listing links to one booked stay. It starts with the few things that rule a place in or out, caps the shortlist, compares every option on the same checklist, and closes with a short vote and the bedroom conversation most groups put off until they arrive. If you have not agreed dates and a budget yet, start with how to plan a group trip and come back here.

Step 1: Agree the non-negotiables before anyone shares a link

Once someone has fallen for a listing, every problem with it sounds like an excuse. So ask for the hard constraints before anyone starts browsing holiday-rental sites.

Ask each person or household:

How many people are you bringing, including children, and how old are they?
Who needs their own room, and who is happy to share a bed?
Does anyone need step-free access, a ground-floor bedroom or a cot?
Do you need to reach the place without a car, or will you need parking?
What is the most you can spend on the stay, either per night or in total? Ask this one privately.

Post a short summary back to the chat: “Eight of us, two children, one cot, real beds for everyone, one person without a car, stay budget up to 220 per person.” That line becomes the filter every listing has to pass.

Must-haves versus nice-to-haves

A pool, a sea view and a hot tub are usually nice-to-haves. Ask the person who suggested one whether they would drop out without it. If not, keep it for later: it can settle a close vote, but it should not rule anything out on day one.

Step 2: Build a capped shortlist of three to five

An open-ended “post anything you like” thread produces twenty links, half of them unaffordable, and nobody reads them all. Put two limits on it:

Each person or household may add up to two stays that meet the non-negotiables.
The shortlist closes on a set day, usually two or three days after you open it.

If you end up with more than five, the organiser trims it against the summary from step 1. That is not overruling anyone: a stay that cannot fit the group was never an option. Three to five is a real choice, and few enough that everyone looks at each one.

Step 3: Compare every listing on the same checklist

Listings are written to sell, and each one leads with a different strength. To compare fairly, collect the same details for every stay, for your actual dates and your actual headcount.

Real beds, not “sleeps”

“Sleeps 10” is the most people the listing says can stay. It often counts sofa beds, bunks, a fold-out in the living room and every double bed as two adults. Go through the bedrooms one by one and write down real beds: doubles, singles and bunks, and which room each is in. Then check who would share which bed. Teenagers rarely want to share a double, and two couples will not want to share a room.

Bedrooms versus sofa beds, and bathrooms

Count bedrooms with a door. A sofa bed in the living room means someone goes to bed last and gets up first, every day. Then count bathrooms against people. Ten people sharing one bathroom is a queue every morning, and a family with young children will want to be close to one.

The total price, including fees

The nightly price is not what you pay. Use the total for your exact dates with every cleaning fee, service fee, tourist tax and deposit you can find, then divide it. Per person is simplest. Per household or per room is fairer when rooms differ a lot. Agree the rule before anyone books; how to split group trip costs fairly covers the options.

Cancellation terms

Write down the date until which you can cancel for free, if there is one. Group plans change more often than solo ones. A slightly dearer stay with free cancellation can be the safer choice for the group.

Location and getting there

How far is it from the station, the airport or the town centre, and how does each person arrive? A beautiful house that needs a car is a problem if two people do not drive.

Access, kitchen, parking and children

Step-free access, or at least one bedroom and bathroom on the ground floor, if anyone needs it.
A kitchen big enough to cook for the whole group, if you plan to eat in.
Parking spaces for every car, not just “parking available”.
A cot, a high chair, stair gates, a fenced pool: whatever the youngest children need.
Pets, if anyone is bringing one.

If the listing does not say, it is not a yes. Message the host before the vote, not after the booking.

A worked example: three listings for eight people

This is a made-up example. The group is eight people: two couples and a family of four with children aged two and six. They need a cot, real beds for everyone, and one person does not drive. The stay budget is up to 220 per person for three nights.

	Farmhouse near the lake	Town-centre apartment	Villa with a pool
Advertised	Sleeps 10	Sleeps 8	Sleeps 9
Bedrooms	4	3	4
Real beds	3 doubles, 2 singles, plus a sofa bed	2 doubles, 2 singles, plus a sofa bed	4 doubles, 1 single
Fits 8 in real beds?	Yes	No - two people on the sofa bed	Yes
Bathrooms	2	1	3
Total for 3 nights, all fees	1,560	1,280	1,720
Per person (8)	195	160	215
Free cancellation	Until 14 days before	None	Until 30 days before
Getting there	Bus from the station	5 minutes’ walk from the station	Car needed
Cot	Yes	Not stated	Yes

The apartment is the cheapest and the “sleeps 8” headline looks right. The checklist shows that two people would spend three nights on a sofa bed, there is one bathroom for eight, and the booking cannot be cancelled. It comes off the shortlist before the vote.

The farmhouse and the villa both fit. The villa has the pool and the most bathrooms. The farmhouse is cheaper and can be reached without a car. In this example, the six adults vote: the farmhouse gets four yes and two maybe, the villa gets four yes and two no, from the person who does not drive and their partner. Same number of yes votes, but the farmhouse has no objections, so it wins.

Step 4: Run the vote with a short deadline

Ask everyone to vote yes, maybe or no on every stay on the shortlist, not just their favourite. A “no” tells you more than silence, and it shows you where the real problems are.

Open the vote when the shortlist closes, and announce the deadline with a day and a time.
Keep it short: two or three days. Good listings get booked by other groups while yours is still deciding.
Say in advance what happens at the deadline: “Whatever leads on Thursday at 8pm is what we book that evening.”
Send one reminder the day before, directly to the people who have not voted.
Agree beforehand whether each adult votes or each household does, so a large family does not outvote a couple every time.

Tie-breaks

Agree the tie-break before the vote, not after. A simple order that works for most groups:

Fewer “no” votes wins. A stay nobody objects to beats one somebody dreads.
Then the lower total price.
Then the better cancellation terms.
If it is still level, the organiser decides and says why in one line.

If the vote splits because two parts of the group want different things, see what to do when your group can’t agree.

Book the winner the same day, post the result in one message and treat it as closed. Reopen it for new information, such as the host cancelling, not for a nicer listing found afterwards.

Step 5: Have the bedroom conversation before you book

Who sleeps where causes more friction on arrival than almost anything else, because nobody wants to be the person who claims the best room. Settle it while the decision is still on paper.

Start with fixed needs: young children next to their parents, a ground-floor room for anyone who struggles with stairs, a quieter room for a light sleeper.
Then look at what is left. If one room is clearly better, with its own bathroom or a bigger bed, decide whether whoever takes it pays more, or whether rooms are drawn by lot because everyone pays the same.
Write the plan down with the booking, so nobody has to negotiate it on the doorstep.

If the cost split is per room, the bedroom plan and the payment plan are the same conversation. Have it once.

Choosing a stay in WeVoTrip

WeVoTrip is built for exactly this decision. It does not book anything and takes no commission. The group decides there and books wherever it likes.

Add each stay as an option on the trip, with the fields from the checklist: total price or price per night, bedrooms, bathrooms, single and double beds, how many it sleeps, location and the booking link. Step-free access, a cot, pets, parking and the free-cancellation date sit under “More details”.
Paste a listing link and WeVoTrip tries to fill those details in for you. Some sites block it; then you can copy the listing page and paste it in instead. Always check what it filled in. Free accounts get two link imports a month to try, and Pro has it on demand.
See whether the beds fit. Count everyone coming, including children and people without the app, for free. A stay card then warns when there are not enough beds for the people staying there, shows the total for the stay’s nights and the price per person divided among the people sleeping there.
Everyone votes yes, maybe or no on every stay and can comment on each one. You see by name who still has to vote and can remind them in one tap. One vote per family is a free setting.
Finalise the winner. The chosen stay stays visible with the name of the person who finalised it. With Pro, a voting deadline finalises the option the group clearly favours by itself; a tie is left for an admin to settle.

You can try the live demo, a trip with seven friends mid-vote, without making an account.

Copy-paste checklist and chat message

Post this when you open the shortlist:

Stay shortlist for [trip]: open until [day, time].

Our must-haves: [number] people incl. [children], real beds for everyone,
[cot / step-free / no car needed], up to [amount] per person for the stay.

Add up to 2 stays each that meet these. For each, please give:
- link
- total price for our dates incl. all fees
- bedrooms and real beds (not "sleeps")
- bathrooms
- free cancellation until [date] or none
- how we get there
- one line on why you like it

Voting opens [day] and closes [day, time]. Whatever leads then is
what we book that evening.

And the checklist for every listing: