Is passport info required for booking hotel?

Dear Sir/Madam,

I booked a hostel for upcoming trip in July. The hostel asked me to upload a copy of passport prior to arrive Japan.

They mentioned:

"According to the relevant regulations of the Japanese Hotel Industry Law: the hotel operators must verify whether the identity of the guest Is consistent with the passport information, so please check the factilities & accommodation information & enter the guest information by the following url"

I know it usually requests a copy upon checking in, just not had these requested prior to arrival.

Thanks

Yes, it is quite normal. Hotels, hostels etc do ask to copy your passport if you are not a resident of Japan.

Yeah that is weird. Never been asked any earlier than check in.

Regular hotels do not ask for the information in advance. The "quoted" passage is not what the actual law says, but for a hostel or a place that does not have a front desk or runs self check-in, it can be a requested as they do need a copy of the relevant details.
This came up a couple of weeks ago over on the TripAdvisor forum. I can't find the thread just at the moment. An older thread
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g294232-i525-k13300390-Our_hotel...

Thanks for the inputs.

Sounded like a kind of 'new normal' of post-covid and popular measures used by AirBnB for 'contactless self check-in' for the digital generations, and it needs to trade off between the privacy/data breach consideration and convernience. I might be a little out of date.

Sure, I'll just find another one if uncomfortable .

Technically speaking, by law hotels are NOT required to keep a photocopy of your passport. They only need your passport number. So you could deny them a photocopy, or give them an anonymised copy. And legally speaking, a hotel cannot deny you your reservation if you don't cooperate.

Having said that, you don't want to be "that guy" who making life hard for the staff. So it's best to allow a photocopy when asked for it. Because even if they're not allowed to cancel your reservation for this reason, if they do it anyway, what are you gonna do about it? Not much.

Asking a photocopy prior to check-in is weird. First of all, you might not have a facility to scan your passport in the first place (but I guess a photo from any camera would do perfectly fine actually). Besides that, they might be asking you for this because their check-in procedure is automated. If this is the case, then I'd understand. Sort of, because automated check-in machines are generally super-overengineered, and so they are likely to contain a little scanner.

I guess your advantage is that you can be sure that only the page of your passport is scanned, that the hotel needs. All your visa stickers and whatnot, which is private information, the hotel doesn't need to know about it, and won't.

Oh and to add to my previous reply:

Make SUPER DUPER SURE that the url they provide you for the passport upload, is safe. Not only that, but do read their privacy statement and make sure they are constrained in what happens to your file, who handles it, how it is stored in their systems, etc.

Japan is pretty trustworthy as a general rule, but when it comes to digital passport photocopies, one can never be too safe. And of course even among the Japanese, rotten apples do exist.

In short: tread with extreme prejudice. Only trust when trust is earned.

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000130600_00001.html...

thus, the above two posts are wrong.

Providing a copy of your passport IS required by law for non-residents - its been that way for a long time. And while the grounds to refuse a booking/stay are quite limited, the laws changed recently to allow hotels to eject guests on a number of additional grounds.