Since 1 January 2025, German guests no longer fill in a hotel registration form (Meldeschein) — the Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act removed that duty. For foreign guests nothing changed: they must sign a special registration form by hand on the day of arrival and show a valid passport or passport replacement, and the accommodation business keeps the form for a year after departure. The rules are in sections 29 and 30 of the Federal Registration Act (Bundesmeldegesetz, BMG).
This guide covers who must fill in the form, the exact fields the law allows, how long to keep it, the fines, and how to take the passport data without typing it.
Who fills it in
- Accommodation: any business that accommodates guests for a fee — hotels, guesthouses, holiday apartments, campsites.
- Guests: foreign nationals must sign the form on the day of arrival and identify themselves with a valid passport or passport replacement document. Accompanying foreign spouses, partners and minor children are recorded only by number; for tour groups of more than ten people, only the tour leader signs.
- German guests: exempt since 1 January 2025.
What the form may contain
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Section 30 BMG lists the data exhaustively — the form may contain only:
| Field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Date of arrival and expected departure | Your booking |
| Surnames and first names | Passport |
| Date of birth | Passport |
| Nationalities | Passport (and the MRZ) |
| Address | Ask the guest |
| Number of foreign travelling companions and their nationality | Ask the guest |
| Serial number of the passport or passport replacement document | Passport |
The business must compare the data on the form with the identity document and note any discrepancy — or the fact that no valid document was shown — on the form itself.
Retention, digital forms and fines
The completed form is kept for one year from the guest's departure and destroyed within three months after that. It must be shown to the competent authorities on request. Instead of a handwritten signature, the law also allows an electronic procedure with the guest's consent, confirmed on the day of arrival by a card payment with strong customer authentication or by an electronic ID. Infringements of these duties can be fined up to €1,000 under section 54 BMG. This article is not legal advice.
Taking the passport data without typing it
Every field that comes from the passport is a transcription risk: a passport number with O and 0 confused, first name and surname swapped, a date of birth in the wrong order. The form is legally only as good as those fields.
- 1Ask the guest for a photo of the passport photo page with the booking confirmation or at self check-in — most guests will send it by WhatsApp.
- 2Extract the fields as text. The two MRZ lines at the bottom of the page carry name, nationality, date of birth and document number with check digits, so a misread shows up.
- 3Compare the extracted data with the document as the law requires, add the address and companions, have the guest sign, and delete the image — the law requires the form, not an archive of passport copies.
WhappScan does step 2: from a photo it returns name, document number, date of birth, expiry and nationality, with the MRZ decoded and its check digits validated. It does not keep the registration form for you.
Try it on the free passport and ID scanner — no signup, up to three documents a day.
For every country side by side, see guest registration in Europe by country.
Sources
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