Inforeg - do you inform police about overseas visitors?!

[Jo Taylor]

Looking through the Inforeg information, I noticed this section -

"B. Cas particulier de la clientèle étrangère
Depuis 1999, l’exploitant de chambres d’hôtes est tenu de faire remplir et signer à ses clients de nationalité étrangère une fiche individuelle de police.
Les informations suivantes doivent être portées sur la fiche :
- le nom et le(s) prénom(s) de l’étranger ;
- sa date et son lieu de naissance ;
- sa nationalité ;
- l’adresse de son domicile habituel de l’étranger.
Elle doit être remise le jour même aux autorités de police."

Is this right? Do all CdH owners have to do this for all overseas visitors?

[Cerise]

Well, I don't - nor do I know anyone who does.  We do take people's names, home addresses and landline phone nos when booking.  Don't bother with car numbers as they are usually hire cars.  Don't ask for ID either  No-one has ever asked us to do this and certainly other CdH in this area don't.  But I suspect it is like many other French rules - the fact that we don't do it,doesn't mean we shouldn't!!

Maggi

 

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

Hi Jo,

The rules are quite clear, yes you have to do so and you're in breach of security regulations if you don't.

For quite a number of years, we were meticulous about filling them in and taking them down (not to the police, by the way) to the local Gendarmerie. They would look at them entirely blankly and file them away somewhere. I once asked whether I had to go on doing so and was told that I did. When I asked more pointedly whether any of my colleagues did, the gendarme assured me they did (I checked, they didn't). So I raised the matter officially at the AGM of the Tourist Office and the head of the local Gendarmerie assured my that yes, all people receiving foreign visitors had to fill these in. "What, even visitors from member countries of the EU?" Hesitation.... "Yes." "But that's in direct contravention of the Schenghen agreement". "Well until we receive new instructions, you have to". So I checked up again on what our colleagues were doing, and when I fould they weren't, I stopped. Since that time, we've never had a visit from the local bobby, reminding us we should.

So you pays yer money and takes yer choice. But you can be sure that you ought, and that if one day, it is discovered that a known terrorist had stayed at your place, you can expect that this would be one of the charges that was levelled against you.

I take the view that in general, we as foreigners have to be that much MORE meticulous about following the rules. That said, I'm not going to start again, unless I receive specific instructions to do so.

[Teamedup]

When we camp we have been asked to fill in such forms sometimes, but not always.  In one camp site the person was blxxdy rude about it I went to the gendarmerie to see what was going on.

The terrorist card was played and apparently in that area they had 'caught' someone from Bader Meinhof when they had camped, around 30 years earlier. The bright sparks I spoke to in the gendarmerie didn't look sharp enough to catch a cold never mind do some good intelligence work on the ID slips they were being handed in. And they too were very rude come to think.  And they had a go at me about some anglais who owned local houses and were not registered..... as what I'm not sure and as they say, it wasn't my onions.

[Miki]

It is normally called a controle (just as many things the Gendarmes do, to find themselves some work !!)

One visit in donkey's years, so a popular rule eh. The day of our one and only controle to see who was staying with us, was the day we moved in to our place in the Doo Don. More a "we're watching you" call I would say then.

We kept records for ages after that and never had one more controle and like Ian, when we asked others they were amazed that we were bothering to take names and addresses. Mind you, even now we sometimes get a gut feeling to take some peoples names etc, like the Gendarmes, it is more a "we're watching you" type affair !

[Anton Redman]

Until the mid 1960s they used to collate centrally the small cards you had to fill in when you stayed in French Hotels. Rather like the Graham Greene entries on US visa applications my parents had developed a slighly surreal set of responces :

Yes please - No more than three times a night at our age

Oldest/Retrait

Frosty

Number One London/Pale Blue Number

Until the travel allowance runs out

 

 

[mascamps.com]

I think that their rules have almost certainly been superceded in respect of having to treat Europeans as though they were French.

That aside, it's been quite some time since I've been asked to fill in one of the cards or books in even quite large hotels so there will be quite a long line of defendants if they do decided to take someone to court for not holding the information. Although, perhaps that could be because they just assume that we're European? Has anyone checked into a hotel at the same time as a non-European lately who could confirm that the info is recorded for them?

We only take things like number plates for drivebys but I'm a bit concerned that keeping that is probably puting us in breach of whatever the French equivalent of the Data Protection Act is. That basically says (in this context) that you can only hold information for specific purposes so whilst we can obviously hold credit card numbers (at least until we've used them) I'm not sure about car number plates (the other ID stuff is exempt if the police are "requiring" you to hold it).

 

Arnold

 

[Jo Taylor]

Many thanks for all your responses.

Blimey. I'm not doing chambres d'hôtes at present, but I did for about 7 years, and hadn't a clue this requirement existed. Really can't imagine trotting off 8km to the gendarmerie for every new arrival, let alone asking all those lovely older ladies their dates of birth!

Cheers,

Jo

[mascamps.com]

Just read the bit about having to report it every day. Impossible for us as the police station isn't open every day!

 

Arnold

 

[Quillan]

We always take peoples name, address, email (if they have one) and phone number and that includes the French. The reason we do this is for our booking system which also has a marketing bit so we can send old clients emails on special deals we do like a 3 for 2 break in autumn and spring. The other point, which is probably more important is if there is an accident, earthquake (we do get them down south) or whatever. We would look rather stupid if we did not know who we had in our house and where they came from. As for the police/Gendarms we have never given them anything nor have we been asked.

[mascamps.com]

We sort-of do that by default as nearly all of our bookings come via reservation systems which have collected all that information. The one thing that they don't pass on to us is the address but they'd have it if/when the gendarmes came calling as they'd need it to charge the deposit to the credit card.

We were also collecting e-mail addresses with a view to marketing as you do. Unfortunately it's illegal in France (and across Europe I think) unless you have asked the people if they are willing to be included on a mailing list. I was toying with the idea of adding the question to our planned checking-in form.

 

Arnold