Form C for Foreign Guests: What Goa Airbnb Hosts Must Do (2026)

Every winter Goa fills up with foreign visitors, and plenty of them stay in villas, homestays and rented apartments rather than hotels. Most of those hosts know about tourism registration. Far fewer know that every foreign guest also has to be reported to the immigration authorities, within a day, on a completely separate system.

The law behind this changed in September 2025, and Goa Police and the FRRO have been actively checking. Here's what hosts need to know.

What changed in 2025

The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 came into force on 1 September 2025. It replaced four older laws, including the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939, under which Form C had been required for decades. The obligation itself didn't change much. What changed is that it now sits in one modern law with clearer rules and stiffer consequences.

• Section 8 makes it the duty of the "keeper of accommodation" to submit information about foreigners staying there.
• Rule 17 of the Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 sets out how: online, within 24 hours of arrival, with the departure recorded too.
• The same rules require the accommodation provider to keep the records electronically for at least a year, and to show them on demand to the Registration Officer, the District Magistrate or a police officer.
• The online system still says "C-Form" in most places, but the login page is now headed "Form III". It's the same filing.

Does it apply to you?

If you're paid to host a foreign national, yes. Hotels, guest houses, homestays, villas, B&Bs and a single rented room all count, and so does a stay of a few hours. The Goa government's notice of 10 December 2025 lists "hoteliers, guest house operators and private house owners housing foreign nationals" as the people who must file.

A few details that catch hosts out:

• Every guest, separately. A group of four foreign friends is four Form Cs, not one.
• OCI cardholders count. They're foreign nationals, and the 2025 Rules name them. An NRI with an Indian passport doesn't need reporting.
• Booking through a platform doesn't change it. Airbnb's own help page for Indian hosts tells hosts to register with the FRRO and file C-Forms themselves.
• Your own guests are different. The Act exempts residential premises of a non-commercial nature, so a friend staying for free isn't covered unless local authorities have directed otherwise for your area.

Why the 24 hours mattersIf a guest turns out to be overstaying their visa, a filed Form C shows you did your part. An unfiled one puts the property owner in the investigation.

What the penalty actually is

The Goa government's December 2025 notice is blunt: non-submission of Form C attracts a penalty of ₹50,000 per case. For a villa that hosts a family of four for a week, that's up to ₹2 lakh for one missed booking.

That's the figure most hosts will face. The law behind it is stricter. Section 8 has no penalty clause of its own, so a failure to report falls under section 23 of the Act, which covers contraventions of the Act or its rules: imprisonment of up to three years, a fine of up to ₹3 lakh, or both. Section 25 allows such offences to be compounded, settled by paying a sum, instead of going to trial. In practice, that's why a fixed figure is quoted.

Goa is checking

This isn't a paper rule in Goa. Recent enforcement, all reported in local papers:

• In June 2025, police registered FIRs against six landlords for letting premises to foreign nationals without filing Form C: two at Anjuna, and one each at Mandrem, Mapusa, Verna and Colva. The same drive found 23 foreign nationals staying illegally between January and May, 21 of them in North Goa.
• The FRRO's Special Task Force has since traced overstaying foreign nationals in Goa, and directed accommodation providers across the state to follow Form C rules strictly.
• The Goa government issued its December 2025 notice specifically to explain the new Act, the forms and the ₹50,000 penalty to hoteliers and home owners.

Notice who was booked in June 2025: landlords renting out premises, not hotel chains. When foreign nationals are found staying in Goa illegally, the first question is where they stayed and whether that stay was reported. A missing Form C makes the guest's problem the host's problem too.

How to register (once)

Form C is filed on the Bureau of Immigration's e-FRRO system, indianfrro.gov.in. The Goa government's notice also points to the Bureau's main site, boi.gov.in. Before you can file anything, you register as an accommodation provider.

1. Fill the accommodation registration form online with your property's address and ownership details.
2. Activate the login. This is where Goa's notice splits two kinds of provider:
   • Hotels and commercial units: print the signed application, put your seal on it and submit it to the FRRO, which approves your user ID.
   • Individual home owners: no visit needed. Submit the form, and an OTP goes to your registered mobile number. Enter it with your user ID on the activation page. You'll need an Indian mobile number.

Keep the property documents handy. Airbnb's guidance for Indian hosts lists what FRRO offices typically ask for: for homestays and B&Bs, the premises address, ownership details and operating licence; for individual houses and apartments, a utility bill and property tax receipt in your name and the sale deed or rent agreement. Your local office may ask for more. Your Goa Tourism registration is a separate requirement, but having it in order makes this step simpler.

Filing for each guest

Once you're registered, each foreign guest takes a few minutes:

1. At check-in, take a copy of the guest's passport photo page and their visa (or OCI card), and note the date and time they arrived.
2. Within 24 hours, log in and fill Form C: name, nationality, passport number, visa or OCI details, arrival date and time, and your address. Upload the documents and submit.
3. Save the acknowledgement. Some FRRO offices ask for printed copies, so keeping a PDF of each one is the easy option.
4. At check-out, record the departure within 24 hours. The guest should give you the departure date and their next address.
5. Keep everything for at least a year, as the 2025 Rules require.

If a guest arrives late at night, the 24 hours still runs from arrival. The safest habit is to file at check-in, while the passport is in front of you. It's also worth saying in your listing that you'll need passport and visa copies at check-in, so foreign guests aren't surprised.

Form C is not the TIME app

Goa hosts with foreign guests have two different reporting duties, to two different authorities. Form C goes to the immigration system, guest by guest, within 24 hours. The TIME app goes to Goa's Tourism Department once a month, as anonymous statistics for every guest, Indian or foreign, by the 5th. TIME records a foreign guest's country but not their passport, so it doesn't count as reporting them. The Tourism Department's own advisory says units hosting foreign tourists must file both.

The short version

• Register once on indianfrro.gov.in as an accommodation provider. Home owners can activate with an OTP.
• File Form C for every foreign guest, OCI holders included, within 24 hours of arrival.
• Record the departure within 24 hours of check-out, and keep records for a year.
• Separately, file TIME (Form XI) for all guests by the 5th of each month.
• Missing a Form C costs ₹50,000 per guest in Goa, and the Act allows far more.

If you're booking a stay in Goa as a foreign visitor, a host asking for your passport and visa at check-in isn't being nosy: they're required by law to file this within a day. It's one of the signs of a legitimate, compliant listing, like the checks in our guide on how to book a verified stay in Goa.

This guide explains the rules as published. It isn't legal advice. Requirements can vary by FRRO office, so check with Goa's FRRO if your situation is unusual.