[chatmasta]

Plenty of modern hotels in Western countries require you to submit your passport to reception, who then scans it and keeps a copy of it. In fact Marriot recently suffered a data breach where the attacker obtained the photos of these passports.

Of course, that's not mutually exclusive with Western nations having "The Stasi Mentality..."

[petre]

I know. Most of them have a fill in the blanks sheet with name address and document s/n.

I can understand scanning documents if one rents a vehicle, although for hotels I fail to see why the form shouldn't be enough. It's not like they don't have cameras at the reception desk and I don't pay with a card under my name, they can also check my ID and fill in the form themselves if they don't trust the customer. Why should I trust them to properly handle copies of my ID? They are not a bank operating under strict regulation.

The thing is back then they were physically keeping your ID until you've paid in full and checked out. Last time it happened to us in Serbia, in 2019. The receptionist regarded us with suspicion. Brought back memories from the '80s. If you've played Papers Please you know what I mean. Now about 8 Schengen Area states have introduced border checks. Great.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/s...

[chatmasta]

Interesting. That didn't happen to me when I stayed a month in an Airbnb in Serbia, although the host did ask me for a copy of my passport. (Not that I'd expect it from an Airbnb host even if hotels were doing it... just an additional data point).

For renting a vehicle (or more likely, something like a bike or moped), I can understand why they take your ID as a form of collateral in exchange for the material goods they're lending you. But for a hotel there's no real reason to hold onto it.

Out of curiosity, did you acquiesce and leave your passport with them?