Self check-in in Italy: what the rules say

Self check-in isn’t banned in Italy. What isn’t allowed is letting a guest in without anyone having checked that they are the person on the document: documents sent through the chat, a code for the door or a keybox, and no visual check at all. Italy’s Council of State settled this in November 2025, upholding a Ministry of the Interior circular, and in the same ruling it made clear that the check can also be done remotely, through a video link at the entrance that shows, in real time, who is coming in.

So the keybox can stay. It just can’t be the only step.

The rules have moved twice in a year and may move again: before you change the way guests get in, check the sources linked here (they’re in Italian) and the guidance of the Questura, the police headquarters, of the province where your home is.

Where the duty to identify guests comes from

From Article 109 of Italy’s public security law, the 1931 Testo unico delle leggi di pubblica sicurezza, known as TULPS. Anyone who provides accommodation may host only people carrying an identity document, and must send their details to the Questura. Since 2018 the duty has applied expressly to anyone who lets or sublets a home, or part of one, on contracts of less than thirty days. A short let on Airbnb or Booking.com falls under it, whether you let as a private owner or as a business.

The law doesn’t say how you check that the document belongs to the person walking in. That’s where the argument began.

What the November 2024 circular says

With circular no. 38138 of 18 November 2024, Italy’s head of police wrote to every prefect and every questore, the head of each provincial police headquarters. The reasons given: the growth of short-term rentals, the Jubilee year about to begin in Rome, and the international situation.

The circular looks at what it calls remote identification — copies of documents sent online, and entry with an automatic door code or a keybox — and concludes that it doesn’t meet Article 109. Anyone running accommodation, of any kind, has to check de visu, by sight, that the people staying match the documents, and then report them to the Questura. The Questure have repeated it in their own guidance, as the one in Grosseto did in its answers to frequently asked questions.

What happened in court

1. November 2024. The circular is issued.
2. January 2025. FARE, a federation of associations of non-hotel accommodation providers, challenges it before the regional administrative court of Lazio, the TAR.
3. The first ruling. The TAR of Lazio, with ruling 10210 of 2025, annuls it: it finds it in conflict with Article 109, disproportionate and not backed by an adequate investigation.
4. The appeal. The Ministry of the Interior appeals to the Council of State, Italy’s highest administrative court, which brings the hearing forward to 9 October 2025.
5. 21 November 2025. The Council of State, third section, in ruling 9101 of 2025 upholds the appeal, overturns the TAR’s ruling and dismisses the original challenge. The circular stands, and so does the duty to identify guests.

What the Council of State made clear

The part that matters to anyone who lets a home comes near the end of the ruling. Identification de visu, the judges write, doesn’t necessarily mean a person at the door. It can be done with video-link devices that the host sets up at the entrance, as long as they can establish, at the moment the guest comes in, that the guest is the holder of the document, whether shown on the spot or sent online. The ruling’s examples are a digital peephole and a QR code that captures a still image.

What the circular strikes at, according to the same ruling, are the most extreme procedures: collecting the documents and sending the guest the code for the door or the keybox, with no visual check whatsoever.

What you can do, and what you can’t

• You can let guests arrive when they like, at night too, and hand over the keys with a code or a keybox, after someone has checked that they are who the document says.
• You can do the check remotely, with a video link at the entrance that shows who is coming in as they come in, to compare with the document.
• You can ask for documents before arrival, to prepare the registration with the police. They don’t replace the check at the door.
• You can’t send the door code to someone who has only sent a photo of a document, with nobody seeing them come in.
• You can’t host anyone who doesn’t have a valid identity document.

A frequent question: what about a video call the day before, from the guest’s own home? That isn’t what the ruling describes. It talks about devices at the entrance and a check made at the moment of entry.

An arrival within the rules, without keeping the guest waiting

In practice, an arrival that respects the rule goes like this:

1. Before arrival, the guest sends the details and documents of everyone in the group, and says what time they’ll arrive.
2. On arrival, someone checks that the person is the one on the document: in person, or through the video link at the entrance.
3. Only then does the guest receive the code or open the keybox.
4. Within 24 hours of arrival, the details of every guest, children included, are sent to the Questura on the State Police portal, Alloggiati Web; for stays shorter than a day the deadline is six hours, as the Questura of Piacenza sums up in its information sheet on guest registration.
5. The portal issues a receipt for each day’s registrations: download it — it stays available for 30 days — and keep it for five years.

The whole cost of the rule sits in step 2: at arrival time somebody has to be there, in person or behind a screen. For an owner looking after a home alone from far away, let alone from another country, it’s the hardest part.

What your guests are asked for, and what happens to their data, is explained from their side in why hosts in Italy ask for your passport.

What changes for the owner

If you let the home yourself, the duty is yours: you check the guest’s identity and you register them, with your own credentials. If you hand the home to a manager, the police accept that the manager registers on Alloggiati Web and sends the registrations for you: the Questura of Rome says, in its page on the portal, that agencies managing private flats let for less than 30 days can register and report on the owners’ behalf. In that case, write into the management contract who identifies the guests and how, with whose credentials the registrations are sent, and who keeps the receipts. What a management contract covers is in how property management works.

The other obligations of anyone who lets, from the CIN to the tourist tax, are set out in order in Airbnb rules in Italy.

How we do it

In the homes we manage, the guests’ arrival is our job: we check the identity of whoever arrives, on arrival, as the rule requires, and then register the guests on Alloggiati Web. It’s part of short-term rental management, together with the CIN and the regional code.

How we work, from the guests’ arrival to the statement at the end of the month, is in the Maison Method. If you’d like to know what your home could earn with someone looking after it, the estimate is free.