Passport - leave in hotel room or carry?
 

Hello...I haven't been to Europe in 10 years. The only other two times out of the country were Bora Bora and Bermuda, where I've left my passport in the hotel safe with no problems. I know to make a copy of it and store it separately...but do I carry the copy, or the original? We will be in Spain for 10 days: 2 nights Barcelona, 2 in Madrid, 1 in Grenada and 4 in Marbella. Each hotel does have a safe. What do you do with it? (I did buy one of those handy passport/ticket wallets that zips all around.)

I think you are supposed to carry it with you. It might even be a law in some countries. (Someone will know that answer on here.) That being said though, I rarely carry it with me.

I usually carry mine in a money belt. How do you know the hotel safe is really safe? I think it is safe most of the time, but I have learned from other posters on this board that sometimes the hotel manager will have a key.

I always leave mine in a safe place in the hotel or apartment and carry a photo copy. I can always retrieve the original if need be (although a copy has always sufficed when rarely asked for it during the day) and I feel more confident knowing it is not on my person to possibly get lost or stolen.

I also leave a copy with someone at home in case I need the info from it and both my original and copy are lost or stolen.

Sometimes I leave it in the hotel room safe and sometimes I carry it with me either in a money belt or other secure place. If I am going to make a major purchase with a credit card I carry the passport because there have been times when I have been asked by a merchant to provide recognizable (to them) identification.

There may very well be a law in some places which requires suitable identification..whether or not that has to be a passport is anyone's guess.

As to "how safe" the room safe is...one of many questions you could ask. How safe is the hotel room? Hard to know. If you are absolutely convinced that the safest place for the passport is to keep it on your person then do so.

In all my trips to Europe I have never been stopped on the street and asked to produce a passport and that certainly includes multiple trips to Spain.

I make copies and leave them at home and always have my passport with me. I do not leave it in the room safe or the hotel safe, I just know how I am, and there I would be at the airport ready to board my flight home and can you guess where my passport would be? Oh yea. I know eveyone is not like me.

I keep mine with me at all times, in my moneybelt. Of all the things I need, that's what I need the most. I'm not entrusting it to a 'safe' or to my memory to fetch it before leaving town.

I leave it in the manager’s safe, or in a guest safe if there is one, with travel tickets and spare credit cards and cash, and carry a copy of the key pages. There is no business future for a manager who steals passports. Bum bags and so on look to me like invitations to theft.

Ben Haines, London
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when i was in spain a couple of years ago, we all just made photocopies of everything & carried those--they worked quite well
as for the safe, our hotel room had one of those little things that you insert the coins & it gives you a code slip--very handy....

It's a personal feeling but I do not trust hotel safes (room safes and the managers' safes). I want to be sure I have my passport with me in the money belt when I go out.

I always leave the passport and fligh ticket mine in a safe place in the hotel or apartment and carry a photo copy.
Never had a problem, and two times I was very, very glad that I did this!

The whole time we were Spain, our passports, tickets, and spare credit cards stayed in the hotel safes. And we used quite a few hotels. Then again, we only stayed in reputable hotels who would be concerned about their reputations if tourists filed reports with police against their staff stealing from them.

No problems. No thefts. No break-ins.

And no, police in Spain are not in the habit of pulling tourists aside and demanding to see one's passport. I'm not even certain where that originated from.

I never carry my passport on me except when traveling to a new place. I leave it in my hotel, where I feel it is much less exposed to possible theft than it would be on my person. So far I have experienced a couple of attempts at pickpocketing, but no room safe break-ins.

I usually leave mine in the hotel room or safe. That reminds me that once when I was in Italy we put our in the hotel safe and as we departed and were walking out the door the clerk asked, "do you have anything in the safe?" OH BOY! I am glad she asked I completey forget, we probably would have been at the airport ready to go before we realized!

How hard is it to get a replacement with the photocopies?

I like what someone mentioned earlier about scanning it an placing it on a serve, such as Yahoo Photos. That way you can alwways get a copy printed.

I asked my friendly local consular officer where most disappeared passports were last seen, and he said "hotel safes." He declined to speculate as to whether this was due to most people keeping them there, or to other factors.

It seems to me that anyone who goes to the effort of securing valuables on his or her person would do a good enough job of it that the articles would rarely be stolen.

I always carry everything I need to get home (passport, tickets, money) no matter what happens back at the hotel, including (without limitation): pilferage, an honest mistake, or fire.

When I went to the UK, I carried mine with me at all times. You do need them if you go into any bank

Good advice. I would not trust my passport to a hotel safe. Always have it in my moneybelt under my clothes. Though I admit I've wondered what I would do if swimming in summer!

I typically carry my passport with me, though not in a bag that might be pilfered. When traveling with my niece we had color copies made and she carried that while I held on to the original. No, she is not ditzy (far from it!) but it just seemed a prudent thing to do since we were usually but not always together - e.g., split up in a department store.

"...How hard is it to get a replacement with the photocopies?..."

It isn't difficult, as you can go get photos taken, but -
what if you didn't know you lost it until the morning you're leaving? or what if it was Saturday and you're leaving Sunday?
You would then experience some additional (and not cheap) expenses for delayed travel; and for anyone on a tour, the tour will move on without you.

Another idea that I got from this board is to scan your passport and email it to yourself. Of course, I would still carry hard copies with me. But if somehow those copies got lost too, all you have to do is go to a computer and print out your scanned copy.