All three situations from the intro happened to me in a single summer. Each time I stood in the hallway with my phone in my hand, trying to figure out what to do. It wasn't anywhere in one place, because the laws on accommodation providers assume a guest holding a valid passport and a child with their own ID card. Reality is more varied.

First, one sentence to put your mind at ease: you're not the police. Your obligation is to record what the guest showed you and report it. You don't have to verify whether the document is genuine or decide whether the guest is allowed to be in the country. But without a document number you have nothing to record — and that's where the problems start.

What two laws require of you

The cizinecká policie (Foreign Police) (Act No. 326/1999 Coll.) requires a report on every foreign national, including children, within 3 working days. The foreign national is obliged to show you a travel document, a residence permit card, a registration certificate, a residence card, a permanent residence permit card or a permanent residence card — and to fill in and sign the registration form in person; children under 15 don't sign (Section 103(b)). Anyone who doesn't show a document risks a fine of up to CZK 3,000 — them, not you. In the report, the document number is a mandatory field.

The municipality (Act No. 565/1990 Coll., Section 3g) requires the evidenční kniha (guest register) to contain, for every person, Czech guests included, the number and type of identity document — and the law lists exactly nine types: a national ID card, a travel document, a certificate of temporary residence (today a registration certificate), a residence card of a family member of an EU citizen, a residence permit card, a residence permit card for foreign nationals, a permanent residence permit card, an international protection applicant card, and a temporary protection applicant card. A driver's license, a health insurance card, an ISIC card or a firearms license are not on the list.

Case 1: The guest only has a driver's license

A Czech guest pulls out their driver's license and is surprised it isn't enough. For the guest register it isn't — you need a national ID card or a passport. The simplest thing is to ask for the ID card on their phone: the eDoklady app shows the same document number that you record. You don't copy anything, you just write down the number and type.

For a foreign national it's more serious. Without a travel document or residence card you can't submit the report, and that's your obligation, not theirs. An EU citizen almost always has at least their country's national ID card — for EU citizens that counts as a travel document and is enough. If the guest has nothing at all, you're at case 5.

Case 2: An expired passport or ID card

The law on accommodation providers never says “valid”. It says: show the document, record it, report it. The obligation to stay in the country with a valid document is the guest's — that's between them and the police, not you.

In practice this means: record the document number and type as you see them, and send the report as normal. Don't write comments like “document expired” in the UbyPort note field — the note is reserved for codes from the police methodology. The police will check the validity themselves.

What does make sense: ask for a different document. Most Europeans have both an ID card and a passport, and one of them is usually valid. Turning a guest away just because of an expired document is neither necessary nor sensible.

Case 3: A lost or stolen document

The guest arrives with a paper from the police: a “Confirmation of reporting the loss or theft of a document”. Here the police methodology (26 March 2025) is clear: the text NONE goes in the travel document number field and the report is submitted. In the guest register, record the type and number of the original document if it's stated on the confirmation, plus a note about the loss with the reference number of the confirmation.

The same NONE code is also used for a foreign national who identifies themselves with a residence permit card issued by the Czech Republic and doesn't have their passport on them: NONE in the document number, and POBYT and the card number in the note.

Case 4: A child

All children are reported — the law has no age exemption — and all of them are recorded in both registers. The only difference is that a child under 15 doesn't sign the form, and people under 18 are exempt from the poplatek z pobytu (tourist tax). Record the reason for the exemption, otherwise the municipality will assess the tax retroactively.

A child with their own document is the simplest case. Since 2012, all children in the EU have had their own passport or ID card; they're no longer entered in their parents' passports.

A child entered in a parent's passport still exists for some non-EU countries. The police methodology: the parent's passport number goes in the travel document number field, and a note that it's the parent's document. The same number goes into the guest register with the type “travel document”, plus the reason for the exemption.

A Czech child with no document at all is the most common situation and at the same time the only one the law doesn't account for: you have nothing to put in the “number and type of identity document” field. Czech children aren't reported to UbyPort, so it's only about the guest register. Established practice: name, date of birth and address as for everyone else, “no document — child under 15” in the document field, and “person under 18” as the reason for the exemption. What the municipality mainly cares about in an inspection is why you didn't collect the tax; that should be clear from the register.

A foreign child with no document at all shouldn't happen, because without a document they wouldn't have crossed the border. If it does happen, the police methodology doesn't explicitly address it. In practice I report the child with the parent's document number, just like a child entered in a passport — an unreported child is a mistake, and a report with the parent's document is the closest procedure the methodology knows.

Case 5: The guest has nothing and won't show anything

Here the answer is no. A foreign national with no travel document, no residence card and no confirmation of loss is a guest you can't report, and therefore can't accommodate without breaking the law. Refusing is fine, and the law doesn't require anything else of you.

So that it doesn't turn into an argument in the hallway, put one sentence in your house terms: accommodation is conditional on every guest presenting an identity document, as required by law. Then refusing isn't arbitrary, it's a contractual condition the guest accepted by booking.

And one more case where you record things differently than you'd expect: the guest who booked didn't come, and someone else is staying. The registers record the people actually staying, not the person who booked. Record whoever is sleeping there — all of them.

Overview