Passport Safety
 

Our Hanoi travel agent has requested passport scans in advance of our trip to viet nam (and other countries in SE Asia) to arrange for express check in at all of our hotels. I'm concerned that any hotel employee could then forward this email to someone else. Is this standard operating procedure? Or am I right to be concerned. The alternative is just regular check-in. Not a big deal, I suppose.

If you are concerned about ID theft etc. Don't do it. The alternative of regular check in (which 99.9% of peole will do) means that they will either hold on to your passport for the duration or at the very least a few hours whilst they register you with the police. As you say "no big deal" but always a concern with the latter that they could lose your passport!

Never heard of this before in Vietnam and I would be a little concerned about the agents practice of doing this.

I was required to do this by my Vietnamese travel agent, but it was to get a visa in advance. I see no reason to do it for a hotel.

Lots of posters here have reported the agent asking for a scan of their passport and no one has reported anything going awry with this. It is standard operating procedure for most agent in VN. But do what you are comfortable with. As Thursdays says, usually they ask for this to do a pre-arranged visa. Like you, if they just want it for express check-in it seems like overkill. As crellston says, your hotel will hang on to your passport for a few hours while they get you registered with the police.

It is the standard operating procedure for many travel agents in Vietnam. However, if you feel uncomfortable providing it, you can refuse.

Thanks everyone for your responses.