Cancelling a booking because the guest does not want to share his ID?

[Yannis50]

Hi I live in Switzerland and own a flat in the mountains. The local legislation requires any host to identify and register his guests with the tourism office for the guest tax. 
I have therefore introduced an online check in that asks the guests to submit electronic copies of their ID‘s or passports. I am also asking for the respective guests to take a selfie showing their own ID.

I have now a concrete case where the guest does not want to share his ID. The only rational explanation I can find, is that this person is not the person he pretends to be, which would basically also imply that airbnb has done a poor job in verifying the guests identity… It is very clear to me that I will never tolerate guests who want to remain anonymous (I do also never see the guests as I am using a key safe). I basically have no other option but to cancel his booking.

Are there any penalties from Airbnb I need to worry about?

thanks

Yannis

[Sarah977]

@Yannis50  I don't see any listing on your profile. Do you state in your listing ad that guests  are required, by law in your country, to provide this info? If you only send this after a guest has booked, you are remiss- it needs to be disclosed in the listing write-up.

There are lots of penalties for hosts cancelling bookings. One of which is that the dates get blocked, so you can't rebook them. If it was an Instant Book, you have 3 penalty-free cancellations per year. Otherwise you'd have to contact Airbnb and plead your case for a penalty-free cancellation.

And no, all guests who balk at sending a host copies of their ID aren't scammers up to no good. People are cautious about online identity theft. And most guests don't realize that the personal info they upload to Airbnb isn't visible to the host. So they may think it's suspicious that you are asking for what they think you already have access to.

[Brian2036]

@Yannis50 

I suppose you could tell the guests that they cannot checkin until they are registered with the tourism office.

If they don’t want to email the information they  can go there and register themselves, then send you proof that they did so.

Or they can cancel their reservation themselves.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Yannis50  is this registration obligation written somewhere online where your guests could read it? Because here in Croatia all hosts can print it from the internet and show it to their guests. It is written in a few languages and Here is the link: https://www.klub-iznajmljivaca.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/gdpr-obavijest-na-hr-eng-de-it-1-1.pdf

The last sentence is:

If you can not or do not want to provide us
your information for any reason, we are not
authorized to provide you accommodation
service.
Thank you for understanding

We have it printed in our apartments and if guests don't want to show us their IDs we can reject to host them, and call the police to escort them out if they don't want to leave voluntarily.