Pasport taken off of you in hotels?

[weloveliam@space]

A tea toweled Osama Bin Laden could stroll through Ibiza passport controll un-noticed its that laid back.

It looked like they were watching a football game in their office

The office here in alicante has beeen empty for years. I think they juts leave it upto the departure

As for the game, was it during the world cup? If so you cant blame them, they did win it

 

[djjaycool]

I travel alot and it is standard practice in most countries to register you with the local police when you check into hotels. I think the US immigration is the worst in the world. My wife is not a US resident but a legal resident and has a hard time every chance the are A=holes. Customs and immigration are a time waister. I have registered my personal information with most airlines and US customs so I don't end up on the no fly list.

 

[PeteB]

Hi,
I have been going to spain for many years. Whenever I have booked into a hotel they ask for my passport,

Why?

Sometimes they photocopy it and give it straight back, sometimes they keep it for a day or 2.

Why?

On a visit to Ibiza 4 years ago, within an hour of landing a bag disappeared from our hire car while changing a flat tyre, just 1 km or so from the airport - it contained our passports, driving licences, cash, traveller's cheques, medication, camera, pocket computer, chargers for phones, PDAs etc. and lots of other items (including one of the last ever printed Spotlights! I'm still gutted about that even today ).

Lucky we had picked up the hire car or without driving licences they no doubt wouldn't have let us have it, but I was wondering how much of a problem not having passports would be when we checked into our accommodation (the excellent Sol Bahia Apartments in San An, booked through Spotlight).

Fortunately, the manager was wonderfully helpful – “no problem” was his immediate response, he just gave us a couple of forms to complete for the local police. He also gave us free use of his fax machine during the following week to help with sorting out the travellers' cheques (Amex turned out to be the most useless bunch of burkes I've ever come across!, but that's another story).

Getting temporary passports from the consulate was a breeze though. Fortunately, I was also about to log onto my home PC from an Internet cafe and print copies of our documents from scans held on the PC.

BTW - I have seen foreign visitors asked for their passports in hotel in the UK.

Regards

PeteB