I just booked an Airbnb property in Bologna for one night. The host sent me a link to upload information (including photo, passport etc.) through an online service called Vikey. The other Airbnbs I have booked for this trip do not require uploading this information online. However, that may be because the hosts will meet us in person at check-in to review our passports.
Has anyone else done this before? Is this legit?
Yep, normal
The passport requirement is an Italian government thing that they recently reiterated the need for renters to complete. It used to be Europe-wide but I've noticed that in places like France it was really starting to get ignored, but Italy is sticking to it.
Vikey appears to be a company serving this exact AirBnB, no host check in market for document and key/lock management. That's no testament to their security other than the fact they are pretty big in this space now. I have seen posts by people saying they reached out to AirBnB with these same concerns and were told that this is a legit service.
Make sure you are at "vikey.it" and not some other similar URL.
I do think it's funny when we're told to keep our passport data super secret but copies of it are floating in hotels all over Europe.
=Tod
I had to use Vikey for check-in in Milano in 2022 and 2023, both times for the same property. Totally legit and no problems.
To Tod, I do not understand why a lot of Americans seem to think there is some information in their passports that has to be kept secret. Unless US passports are very different from European ones, there is only your name, place and date of birth, your height, whether you are male or female, and of course dates of validity of the passport.
@ veerle3 Until recently very few Americans held passports and they were regarded as rare and valuable, I guess. Maybe because they are the highest form of Federal ID in a country where there is no national ID card system. When they added RFID many people - including the government I believe - recommended getting special RFID blocking cases to hold them.
I can't otherwise explain but in the past, hopefully not now, Americans were famous for making a fuss over handing over their passports to hotel staff. I've never seen it happen but I've seen how gingerly the staff used to bring it up which makes me think they had seen it firsthand.
Just yet another American quirk, I guess,
=Tod
