Hotel wants a passport copy: what you can and can't redact
Guest-registration law needs your document number. The photocopy in the back office does not.
Short answer
- Do not redact the document number or date of birth at a front desk in Europe — guest-registration law requires both, and a covered field means a failed check-in.
- Recording data and keeping a copy are different things. Ask them to record and return; that is what the law actually asks for.
- A pre-arrival email request is the one where redaction genuinely helps — there is no legal duty to send an image ahead of arrival.
You arrive at the front desk and the receptionist asks for your passport “to make a copy.” A lot of privacy advice will tell you to hand over a redacted one. For a European hotel that advice is mostly wrong, and following it will get you sent back to the desk.
The honest version: registration law needs the number
In many countries, accommodation providers are legally required to register guests and file certain identity details with the police. Spain is the strictest well-documented example: under Royal Decree 933/2021, in force for hotels, short-term rentals and campsites since 2 December 2024, the property must collect and transmit — among other fields — the document type and number, the date of birth, the nationality and, for a Spanish DNI, the support number.
Those are the exact fields most guides tell you to black out. Black them out and the property cannot complete the filing it is legally obliged to make, so it will ask you for the document again. This is one of the situations where redacting does not protect you, it just wastes everyone’s afternoon — see when redacting your ID won’t work for the full list.
What you can still push back on
The obligation is to record data. It is not an obligation to keep a photograph of your passport, and the two get conflated constantly at the front desk.
- Ask them to record and return. “Please take the details you need and hand it back” is a reasonable, common request, and a compliant property can meet it — the data goes into the registration system either way.
- Ask what happens to any scan. Under the GDPR the property needs a lawful basis and a retention period for an image it keeps beyond the filing. The Spanish data protection authority has said plainly that the decree obliges properties to collect data, not to hoard document images.
- Cover the MRZ and your signature if you do end up providing an image. Neither is in any guest register: the machine-readable zone only re-encodes fields the clerk is already typing, and no register collects a specimen signature.
Where redaction genuinely helps: the pre-arrival email
Plenty of hotels and rentals now ask guests to email or message a passport photo ahead of check-in. Nothing in any registration law requires this. It is a convenience for the property, and it is the riskiest version of the request: email and chat keep that image on servers, in sent folders and in backups more or less forever.
Here a redacted copy is exactly right — or a polite “I’ll bring it to check-in.”
| At the desk, for registration | Emailed before arrival | |
|---|---|---|
| Legally required? | Yes, in much of Europe | No |
| Document number | Must stay visible | Cover it |
| Date of birth | Must stay visible | Cover it |
| MRZ and signature | Cover — never registered | Cover |
| A redacted copy works? | No | Yes |
| Better option | Show the original, ask for it back | Present it at check-in instead |
If you do send something ahead, send a redacted, watermarked copy prepared on your phone — Anonymize my ID does this offline in about a minute — and delete it from the thread once you have checked in. For why messaging apps are a poor place for documents, read is it safe to send your ID over WhatsApp or email?.
Frequently asked questions
Can I give a hotel a redacted copy of my passport?
Not for the registration itself. In countries with a guest-registration duty — Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and others — the property has to file your document type and number, your date of birth and your nationality with the authorities. Covering those fields makes the filing impossible, so the front desk will simply ask again for the original.
So is there anything I can refuse?
Yes: the photocopy. The obligation is to *record* specific data, not to retain an image of the document. You can ask staff to read the fields into their system and hand the passport straight back, and you can ask what happens to any scan they do take and how long it is kept.
A hotel asked me to email my passport before arrival — is that different?
Completely different, and this is where redaction earns its keep. No registration law requires a pre-arrival image; the property is asking for convenience. Send a copy with the machine-readable zone and signature covered and a watermark naming the property and the dates, or simply say you will present the document at check-in.
What can I always cover, even at the desk?
The machine-readable zone and your signature. Neither is part of what a registration system asks for — the MRZ merely re-encodes the fields the clerk is already typing in, and no guest register anywhere collects a specimen signature.