Guest registration laws in Europe, country by country

Why Every EU Country Requires Guest Registration

Almost every European country requires accommodation providers to record who is sleeping on the premises, and in most of them that record is meant to reach the police, not just sit in a folder. What changes from country to country is three things: who has to be reported — everyone, or only foreign nationals — how fast, and whether the property pushes the data to a government portal or simply keeps it and hands it over on request.

Italy and Spain are push-to-portal countries with same-day deadlines. Portugal pushes to a portal too, with a few more days to work with. Germany and France are keep-and-produce: fill in a form, hold onto it, and show it if asked. Romania sits in between — a daily paper form handed to the local police.

Italy — Alloggiati Web and the 24-Hour Rule

Italy's Alloggiati Web system covers every guest — Italian citizens included, not only foreign nationals. Each arrival gets reported individually, not batched at the end of the day, within 24 hours; that window drops to 6 hours if the stay itself is under 24 hours. The legal basis is article 109 TULPS.

There's a real exception worth knowing before building a fully remote check-in around Italy: a Council of State ruling in late 2025 held that article 109 TULPS has always required someone to visually confirm the guest matches their ID. A remote-only arrival doesn't satisfy that today, whatever the check-in software already collected beforehand — Italy is currently the one country in this guide where an unattended arrival doesn't satisfy the law.

Spain — SES.HOSPEDAJES and the 24-Hour Rule

Spain's SES.HOSPEDAJES system asks for guest data immediately on arrival, with 24 hours as the outer limit — RD 933/2021, article 6, is the legal basis. It applies to every hospedaje operator nationwide, replacing the older paper-based registers that used to vary by region. Every guest gets reported, not only foreign nationals.

Germany — The Meldeschein Requirement

Germany's Meldeschein only applies to foreign guests — German nationals have been exempt since 1 January 2025. It's a keep-and-produce obligation, not a push-to-portal one: the form gets signed on the day of arrival, retained for a year, and shown to the authorities if they ask, under §29 and §30 of the Bundesmeldegesetz (BMG).

There's no same-day countdown to beat here, which is a meaningfully different shape of obligation from Italy or Spain — nothing to submit, just something to produce on request.

France, Portugal, and Romania at a Glance

France works like Germany: a form — the fiche individuelle de police — filled in on arrival for foreign guests, kept for 6 months, and produced only if requested, under CESEDA articles R814-1 to R814-3.

Portugal pushes to a portal like Italy and Spain, but on a different clock: SIBA (Sistema de Informação de Boletins de Alojamento) wants foreign guests reported within 3 working days, and uniquely among this group, on both entry and exit.

Romania sits between the two models — a daily paper form (fișa de anunțare) handed to the local police for every guest, with a tighter 24-hour window specifically for the paperwork on foreign nationals, under HG 237/2001.

The table below lines up all six countries side by side.

How EZ2Stay Handles Registration Today vs What's on the Roadmap

Today, Romania is the only country where EZ2Stay automates part of this: the platform generates the daily fișa de anunțare as a PDF you hand to the police, built from the same check-in data already collected. Automatic transmission to the police is on the roadmap, not shipped.

For Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France, everything above is legal fact, not a feature — we describe what the law requires so you can plan for it, not automation we haven't built. What EZ2Stay handles everywhere, regardless of country: the underlying identity data — name, document, nationality, arrival and departure dates — is collected once at online check-in and kept for 90 days by default, the retention window every country's registration rule draws from.

• Live in Romania: daily fișa de anunțare generated automatically as a PDF
• Roadmap: electronic transmission of that form to Romanian police
• Roadmap: direct filing integrations for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France
• Live everywhere: identity data collected once at check-in, kept 90 days by default

Limitations — what we'd do differently

• We don't submit anything automatically to Alloggiati Web, SES.HOSPEDAJES, SIBA, or the German or French systems today — those sections describe the law, not a shipped integration.
• In Italy specifically, a fully remote arrival doesn't satisfy article 109 TULPS right now; a person still has to visually check the guest against their ID.
• Rules change, and your local authority's interpretation can differ from the text — confirm specifics with a local lawyer before relying on this for your property.
• This is not legal advice. Every claim above links to the official government source it's based on.

Related reading

• Italy's Alloggiati Web rules in full
• Spain's SES.HOSPEDAJES rules in full
• Romania's guest-registration rules (HG 237/2001)