Hotels are no longer allowed to keep ID copies
Hotels are no longer allowed to keep ID copies
Hotels and other tourist establishments are not allowed to request or keep copies of identification documents such as identity cards or passports from their customers, the data protection officer said on Monday.
In a statement, Irini Loizidou-Nicolaindou said her office had received numerous inquiries and complaints regarding the practice of hotels requiring copies of such identification documents from their customers.
She added, however, that while these practices are used in some tourist attractions, they are not used in others.
After examining the facts, the Commissioner explained that, in addition to the mandatory collection of customer data at check-in, some hotels also require copies of identity cards or passports , which they then keep until check-out or until the customer pays the bill.
However, keeping such copies is not required by law and hotels and tourist attractions are therefore advised to stop this practice.
Loizidou-Nicolaindou further cited EU Regulation 2016/679 – “on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data”.
It referred in particular to Article 5, which states that personal data must be processed "lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner with regard to the data subject; they must be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner incompatible with those purposes; they must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for the purposes of the processing ('data minimisation')."
In the opinion of the Data Protection Commissioner, the collection and storage of ID copies in this context is not only unlawful, but also violates the principle of data minimization.
“This is because such copies contain data (e.g. a photograph, the father’s full name) which are neither necessary for the proper operation of hotels and tourist establishments nor for the provision of services.”
At the same time, the official recalled that hotels and tourist attractions are required by law to keep records of their customers and refuse accommodation to any customer who does not provide basic identification data upon check-in.
Source: CyprusMail.com
Author: Elias Hazou
Elias Hazou is a senior reporter for the Cyprus Mail, specialising in energy, politics and parliamentary machinations.
