Individual Police Form

[Joanne]

We are holidaying at a Siblu site and have been asked to fill in a police form before arrival.    The information provided by Siblu is:

'As a foreigner in France, you need to fill in the individual police

form. To ensure the security of your entire family we need to know the

identity of each member. In order to facilitate your check in, we

recommend that you 

download and fill in the pdf of the individual police form.'

...and... 'This

information is required under French law for non French nationals.'

We have stayed at many holiday parcs in France over the years and have

never been asked to complete such a form; is it new legislation?

[Joanne]

Apologies for all the 'gobbledegook' accompanying my post - not sure how I managed that!

[nomoss]

The legislation has been in place since 1975, when requirements under regulations from 1946 were relaxed, but I believe establishments usually complete the forms themselves from the information on the guests' passports, or simply ignore the regulation, either because they are unaware or no-one ever checks [:)]

[url]http://www.apiih.fr/2015/01[/url]

[Loiseau]

I suppose if - heaven forbid - there were some kind of major disaster or act of terrorism, there would be a better record of exactly who the victims were. I think the French are currently in a high state of anti-terrorism preparedness, so it may be a spin-off from that.

Gosh, I remember in the 1960s having to fill in those little rectangular forms everywhere one stayed. It was kind of awkward, as my future husband and I were not, er, married at the time...

Angela

[Chancer]

And in the real world people can book a hotel room or accomodation like mine on their mobile phones whilst on the road, they can check in and check out at any time of day or night without ever even encountering a human being in the case of the Autoroute stopover hôtels, not many Police forms filled in for 99.9999999% of the hébergeurs, and in any case I doubt that the Police will have any jurisdiction over a rural camp site unless its a camping municipale in a city.

 

Most likely somone who has never run a business before has bought the site and is blindly following the advice of an expert who will certainly have never run a business themselves, said expert may be being paid for their rubbish advice or may be one of the equally inept parasitic government bodies set up to "accompany porteurs de projets" I was stupid enough to have a meeting with goons like that, never again.

[Chancer]

Amongst the link given I found yet another of these so called expert organisations

http://www.apiih.fr/accompagnement-des-createurs-chr.html

 

The equivalent goons for our area  told me that I had to photocopy the passports of all my guests and take the copies to the Gendarmerie every day, that I must absolutely hit them with a seperate bill for taxe de séjour when they check out, something which gets the local hôtels no end of negative feedback and creates arguments leaving the receptionists in tears, that I would be breaking the law to pay the 20cts per night myself rather than forcing the Customer to do so, that I would be sent to prison if I didnt comply.

 

I got given the same rubbish verbatim from the mouth of the Conseiller départemental,vice-président en charge des actions touristiques Vice-président de la commission Développement économique et emploi, someone at the very pinnacle of business and tourism in the area who also has no clue.

[AnOther]

Just thinking out loud:

As an EU citizen with rights of free movement it's arguable that you are not actually a foreigner and therefore not subject to the completely unenforceable rule.

[nomoss]

The information requested is no more than I remember most if not all French hotels and campsites asking for on checking in, nothing particularly personal, so I can't see where any objection can be to providing it in advance. You are probably going to be asked to produce your passports anyway.

It seems a more light handed approach than that proposed in the UK, where landlords may soon to be required to check the immigration and legal residency status of tenants.

[Chancer]

When I started out with mid term rentals, say 2 weeks to 6 months I would take a copy of the carte d'identité or a passport if it was a foreigner, the French never minded in fact they seemed to expect it, I did it for my own protection though, I would look daft complaining to the Gendarmes about a bad cheque, damage etc if I had no identification for the people, for the odd night it seemed a lot of hassle and not a good experience for the renter.

 

The last 3 months I have been letting through Booking.com, been full pretty much every night in all the apartments, the average stay is only one or two nights though, can you imagine the work involved if I were to comply, photocopying and going to the Gendarmerie every day? Yes they could insist I do so if they want to faire chier or if we had some serious Vigipirate, more likely to get veggypirates though!

 

I have the peoples addresses from Booking.com for what little use that probably is in case of need.

 

One thing is for sure, in this modern smartphone enabled world of ease of booking where your feedback score is far and away the most important thing you dont want to be alienating non French guests just because some god fearing muppet tells you that you must do as they say.

 

[michelin79]

Joanne said:

We have stayed at many holiday parcs in France over the years and have never been asked to complete such a form; is it new legislation?

I too have recently experienced this for the first time (after visiting camp sites for 25 years). It wasn't a Siblu site so it's not just them. It was a site that demanded that new arrivals parked 200 yards away from the reception building so when they asked me for things like passport number (it's in the car!) I didn't get my mini-holiday off to a happy start.

[Rabbie]

In the many visits I have made to France in the last 15 years I have never had to fill in a form or show my passport at any hotel I have stayed in. I do remember filling out the form in 1974 but things seem to have progressed since then.

[idun]

We have only had to fill in such things twice, both in places I detest, once in Antibes and the other and much the worse of the two, Isgny sur Mer (which isn't sur mer at all) in Normandy, and that was the start of a very disagreeable few days there.

So officious was the person who asked us to fill in the form, that I actually went to the gendarmerie and asked if it had been necessary.......... YES, they said, equally officiously, apparently, 'they' the gendarmes of Normandy had found Red Brigade members in the 1970's or was it early 80's, because they had filled in such a form! And then the gendarmes had a go at me because they believed that une famille anglaise who had a house along the road from the gendarmerie were renting it out illegally for holiday lets.

Are  forms with details necessary, well, in so much as I don't blame anyone for wanting to know who is stopping chez eux, even if they had paid up front, as if any damage is caused, I would hope that they would then be able to get the money back.

For the forms for the gendarmerie, well, poppycock as far as I am concerned and quite un-necessary.