Guest Registration in Europe by Country (2026): Who, How and How Fast

Almost every European country requires accommodation providers to record their guests' identity, but the rules differ in the three things that decide your workload: who must be registered (every guest or only foreigners), how (an online portal or a form kept on site) and how fast (24 hours, three working days, or on request). This guide puts six countries side by side and links to a detailed guide for each.

Guest registration by country

Each row summarises the linked guide, which cites its official sources. Rules change: confirm with the competent authority before relying on a deadline. This article is not legal advice.

Three models, three kinds of risk

Portal within 24 hours (Spain, Italy, Croatia). The risk is time. A host who is not on site, a late arrival or a busy changeover day turns 24 hours into a missed deadline. Italy treats a missing report as a criminal contravention; Spain distinguishes a late report from a missing one; see what the penalty regimes actually say.

Portal with a longer window (Portugal). Three working days is more forgiving, but only foreign guests are reported — so the host has to decide guest by guest, and fines are assessed against the number of missing forms.

Form kept on site (France, Germany). There is nothing to send, but the form has to be complete and available when the police ask for it. Germany requires the data to be compared with the passport and any discrepancy noted.

What is the same everywhere

Whatever the model, the fields come from the same place — the guest's passport or ID card — and the same errors appear when they are typed by hand: first name and surname swapped, dates in the wrong order, O and 0 confused in document numbers. For the exact list of fields, see which ID fields the law requires you to collect.

Two practices hold in every country:

1. 1Capture structured data, not a photo to transcribe later. The machine-readable zone (MRZ) at the bottom of passports and most EU ID cards carries name, nationality, date of birth and document number with check digits, so errors are detectable.
2. 2Do not keep an archive of ID copies. Every regime above requires data or a form — none requires you to keep a photocopy indefinitely, and data protection rules push the other way. Extract, register, delete.

Where WhappScan fits

WhappScan does not submit data to SES.Hospedajes, Alloggiati Web, SIBA or eVisitor, and does not keep registration forms for you. It removes the typing: a guest, a cleaner or a receptionist sends a photo of the passport or ID card — by WhatsApp if that is how you already talk to guests — and gets back name, document number, date of birth, expiry and nationality as text, with the MRZ decoded and its check digits validated.

Try it with a sample passport or a real document on the free passport and ID scanner — no signup, up to three documents a day.

Sources

Each country guide lists its own official sources:

• Spain: SES.Hospedajes guide
• Italy and Spain penalties: penalty regimes compared
• Portugal: Law 23/2007 (Diário da República)
• France: Service-Public.fr — fiche individuelle de police
• Germany: §§ 29–30 Bundesmeldegesetz
• Croatia: gov.hr — tourist registration and deregistration