Ireland and passports in hotels

In my experience, hotels keep passports for two reasons. One is for recording visitor information required by the Police...not an issue in Ireland. The other is as a form of security deposit, they reason you will not run off without your passport. The second may pop up, but I do not recall having to leave a passport in Ireland.

I was all throughout Ireland in October 2006 - no one asked for our passports at hotels in the 15 days we were there.

We never had to give our passports to a hotel/B&B for an extended period. If anything, they would ask to see our passports when we were checking in. They took our information and handed them right back.

I've never given up my passport - I refuse to do so. On seven journeys around Europe I've covered Ireland, the UK, Italy, and stayed in specific cities Paris, Berlin, Krakow, Prague, Budapest, Brasov and Bucharest. A budget hotel in Bologna, Italy held onto our passports while we had the room key but anytime we left the building, we returned the key and got our passports.

A hostel in Belfast insisted on an ID, so I gave them my driver's license instead. That's a $4 replacement online in Arizona and I have spares anyhow, so no big deal. At Garibaldi Guesthouse in Budapest, the proprietor held onto my girlfriend's license until we paid for our five nights in full the next day.

It's a sad fact but every year a not insignificant number of tourists try to skip off without paying the bill. Normally supplying credit card details at the reception desk is an acceptable means of avoiding any difficulty. The only time I have handed over my passport was in small hotels in Spain, where hotel owners had to add a small 'tourist tax' to the final bill and this had to be matched to a passport number. This was usually done in the small hours by the night porter and the passports were always handed back at breakfast along with the tea or coffee.