A house guest or overnight guest is a person who is staying as a guest in the house of another person. The presence of a person as a house guest raises cultural and legal considerations, placing the owner of the house in the position of host, with expectations of providing hospitality and seeing to the comfort and protection of the guest. The guest, similarly, assumes social obligations with respect to their treatment of the host and the host's property.
Although any person who visits the home of another may be considered a "guest", even if their visit is only for a few minutes, the term "house guest" is generally understood to apply to "a person who stays overnight in another person's home".[1]
Since ancient times, hospitality has involved welcoming the stranger and offering him food, shelter, and safety.[2] In many cultures, a particular standard of care is expected of a host who has agreed to allow a person to be their guest, and a particular standard of conduct is expected of a person who is a guest in the home of another:
The Abrahamic religions — Christianity, Islam and Judaism — afford special status to the showing of hospitality toward guests, with emphasis on the treatment of strangers and travelers.[3] Similarly, Buddhist teachings instruct adherents to treat a guest "as a god" with a division between planned giving, and unplanned giving, such as inviting in and showing generosity to a wanderer.[4] In the enlightenment tradition, those such as Immanuel Kant saw hospitality as a natural right entitled to guests, albeit for a limited amount of time.[3]
Describing the hospitality shown to European house guests in the Solomon Islands, cultural writer Margaret Visser notes:
Visser further notes that complementary to the social obligations of the host of a house guest are the obligations of the guest, writing that "the other side of the same coin that is hospitality is the fear that can accompany the arrival of another, especially of an unknown other, inside one's own house".
Another author suggests "four excellent rules for being a welcome house guest":
The expected relationship between house guest and host varies by culture. For example, it has been asserted that house guests in France "have limited access to various areas in their host's house. If they need an extra towel, for example, they ask their host or hostess to get it for them rather than rooting through cupboards to find one", whereas house guests in the United States are expected "to help themselves—within reason—to what they need from kitchen and bathroom cabinets or the refrigerator".[5] In some cultures, guests may feel free to give their host a gift to show their gratitude for being hosted, but in others, such as that of the Ila people of Zambia, giving any kind of gift to the host may be socially disapproved, as it may be interpreted as payment, suggesting that the hospitality was for sale rather than an act of generosity of the host.
House guests may also come to "overstay their welcome", leading to an old proverb often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but historically preceding him, that "fish and visitors stink in three days".[6] It has also been noted that "being a house guest is odd in itself" because it exposes the guest to the idiosyncrasies of the host's household. Every household being unique in some way, the host may have "their own way of doing things, ways that are so familiar to them and so calcified within the relative standards of their own family that the inherent weirdness doesn't even occur to them".[7] The word, "guest" originally referred to a visitor to a home, and was later broadened to include persons staying in hotels and similar accommodations. In the mid-2000s it was noted that other kinds of businesses, from restaurants to retail stores, have begun referring to customers as "guests".[8]
Old English law defined a guest as "a traveler who lodges at an inn or tavern with the consent of the keeper".[9]
In some legal jurisdictions, particular rights are afforded to persons meeting a statutory or common law definition of a house guest. The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized that a house guest is entitled to an expectation of privacy, writing in Minnesota v. Olson:[10]