How to keep your passport safe, and where you legally have to carry it

The standard advice is to leave your passport in the hotel safe and carry a copy. In several countries that advice is illegal, and in two of them the consequence is criminal rather than a fine.

So the honest answer is that it depends on where you are, and the difference is worth knowing before you go rather than at a roadside check. Japan, Spain, Portugal and Vietnam require you to have it. Italy attaches a criminal penalty to not producing it. Germany asks you to produce it on demand, with a much smaller consequence. For a lot of other countries the rule is genuinely unclear, and we will say so rather than invent one.

Every TravelReddi country guide carries the entry requirements for your own passport, the local emergency numbers and the safety notes for your destination. The carrying rules below are the part we have gone and checked country by country, because they are the bit nobody sources properly.

Where you are legally required to carry it

This table only lists countries where we could establish the rule from the government's own law or its own words. If a country you are visiting is missing, that is deliberate.

Country	What the rule is	Where it comes from
Japan	Carry required. Foreign nationals must carry the passport and present it to authorised officials on request. Breach is a criminal offence.	Immigration Services Agency, Ministry of Justice
Spain	Carry required. Foreigners in Spain have the right and the obligation to keep the documentation proving their identity and their status in Spain.	Ley Orgánica 4/2000, Article 4, state gazette
Portugal	Carry required. Everyone over 16 must carry an identifying document in public places, and for a non-EU visitor a passport satisfies it.	Lei 5/95, Article 2
Vietnam	Carry required. Foreigners must carry passports and residence documents and present them when competent authorities ask.	Vietnam Immigration Department
Italy	Produce on request, but with a criminal penalty of arrest up to a year and a fine up to 2,000 euros, and the courts read it as needing the document on you.	Legislative Decree 286/1998, Article 6(3)
Germany	Produce on demand. Not having it is an administrative offence with a fine of up to 3,000 euros, not a criminal matter.	Residence Act, section 48 and section 98
India	Produce on demand, within 24 hours of being asked by a registration officer, magistrate, or police officer of at least head constable rank.	Registration of Foreigners Rules 1992, Rule 9

We have written the full picture for two of these already: Germany and Italy, which sit at opposite ends of how seriously the same continent treats this.

Photo by Brad Rucker on Unsplash

Two corrections worth making

A lot of travel writing cites section 40 of Thailand's Immigration Act as the provision requiring foreigners to carry their passport. It is not. That section deals with immigration quotas for residency and has nothing to do with carrying documents. If you see that citation, whoever wrote it copied it from someone who never read the Act.

For Thailand specifically, carrying the passport is commonly expected and a photocopy is widely tolerated in practice. Ask at your hotel for the current local expectation.

The second correction is about the United States, and it is one we nearly got wrong ourselves. 8 U.S.C. 1304(e) is often quoted as proof that every foreign visitor to the US must carry their passport. Read it and it says something narrower: every foreign national 18 and over must carry "any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him." A short-term visitor arriving on a visa or under the Visa Waiver Program is generally never issued one of those, and a passport with an entry stamp is not that certificate. So for most tourists there is no registration card to carry. If you are visiting the US on a short-term basis and want certainty about your own situation, that is a question for an immigration attorney rather than a travel blog.

China is a borderline case worth flagging. Singapore's foreign ministry, quoting Chinese law, advises that foreigners over 16 "are expected to carry their passports with them at all times" and that random police checks happen during heightened security periods. That is a foreign ministry describing another country's law rather than the Chinese government's own words, which makes it good enough to plan around.

Does a photocopy count?

In practice, often yes. In law, it depends on the country, and the distinction is worth keeping in mind.

Our own country guides say that a photocopy is usually accepted for routine identity checks, and that matches what most travellers experience. A hotel wanting to note your details, a bike rental wanting reassurance, a police officer doing a casual street check: a copy frequently satisfies all of them.

The statutes for the countries in the table above refer to producing the passport or an equivalent document with a photograph. Carry a copy, because it is genuinely useful and costs nothing. Just do not treat it as legal cover in a country that requires the original, and do not be surprised if an officer who is being thorough asks for the real thing.

What the four governments actually advise

Their advice is remarkably consistent, and worth reading because it is the part that applies everywhere.

The US State Department tells travelers to "gather your required travel documents and make multiple copies," because "these copies will help you replace your originals if they are stolen or lost while traveling." It also says to give a set of copies to a trusted friend or family member, and to take photos of your travel documents with your phone.

The UK Foreign Office gives the most practical version of this in its safety checklist for festivals abroad: "if you must carry your passport or other valuables with you, keep them in a safe place (for example, in a zipped inside pocket)." It is written for festival-goers, but the advice travels.

Canada is the most specific about the copy: "Take a picture of your passport's photo page." You can also photocopy it and leave a copy with someone you trust before you travel. It also says plainly what not to do: "Don't leave your passport unattended in your luggage, vehicle, hotel room or elsewhere."

Australia's Smartraveller covers both halves: use a hotel safe when you do not need to carry it, keep copies separate from the originals, and know that in some countries you can be arrested or jailed for not having your passport on you.

Notice what none of them say. Not one advises leaving the original at home or ignoring a local carry requirement. The hotel safe is the default only where the law allows it.

Photo by Ana Lanza on Unsplash

How to carry it without losing it

If you have to take the passport out with you, the goal is to make it hard to reach and hard to forget.

Put it under a layer. A flat pouch worn under a shirt, or a zipped inside jacket pocket, is the difference between a document that can be lifted and one that cannot. An outer backpack pocket or a handbag that sits behind you on a crowded metro is where passports go missing.

Do not carry it in the same place as your money. If a bag goes, you want to lose one category of thing, not both. Cards and cash in one place, passport in another.

Take it out as rarely as possible. Every time it comes out at a shop counter or a ticket desk is an opportunity to leave it behind. If a local card or a copy will do for the transaction, use that.

Have a fixed home for it. In your bag, in your room, on your person, it should live in one place and go back there every time. Most lost passports were not stolen. They were put down.

Never hand it over as a deposit. The UK Foreign Office warns specifically about this for Thailand: "Do not hand your passport over as a guarantee, for example to motorcycle or jet-ski rental businesses. Companies may hold on to passports against claimed damage." Offer a photocopy or a cash deposit instead. This is a recognised pressure tactic and it is worth being firm about.

Where the law allows, use the hotel safe. In Germany, once you have checked in and the hotel has recorded your details, the day-to-day risk of carrying it usually outweighs the risk of a fine. In Japan, Spain, Portugal or Italy, that trade does not work the same way.

Before you go, spend ten minutes on this

The preparation below is what turns a lost passport from a ruined trip into a bad afternoon. Some of it is official advice, some of it is ours, and we have marked which is which.

Photograph the photo page. Officially recommended by both the US State Department and Canada. This is the single highest-value thing on the list.

Photograph the back page too. This one is ours, not a government recommendation. Newer US passports carry additional printed data on the reverse of the booklet, and having the full picture costs nothing.

Store the images somewhere encrypted, not in your camera roll. Also ours. A photo of your passport sitting in an auto-syncing gallery is a copy of your identity in whatever account you last logged into on a hotel computer, and photo libraries are one of the first things a compromised email account gives someone access to.

What you want is a password manager with encrypted file storage, so the scan sits behind one password you already know rather than in your camera roll. If you already pay for one, use it, and skip the rest of this paragraph. If you do not, NordPass includes encrypted file storage on its paid tiers and will hold passport scans, insurance documents and booking confirmations in the same place. Any reputable encrypted vault does the same job.

Leave a copy with someone at home. Recommended by the US, Canada and Australia.

Carry two spare passport photos. Ours rather than official. Replacing a passport abroad means completing an application that requires photos, and finding a compliant photo booth in an unfamiliar city while stressed is a genuinely annoying extra step. Two photos weigh nothing.

Write down the emergency consular number for your nationality and keep it somewhere that is not your phone, in case the phone went with the bag.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

If the worst happens

Losing a passport abroad is recoverable, and it is recovered faster by people who know the order of the steps. We have written that out separately: what to do if your passport is lost or stolen, with the forms, the fees, the timelines and the phone numbers for US, UK, Canadian and Australian travelers.

Read it before you need it. It is a short read and it is much less pleasant to read for the first time in a police station. It also covers the question of whether to freeze your credit afterwards, which has a more interesting answer than you might expect, because a passport does not carry your Social Security number and a stolen wallet does.

The short version

• Check whether your destination legally requires you to carry the original. Japan, Spain, Portugal and Vietnam do. Italy effectively does, with criminal consequences.
• Where it is required, carry it under a layer, separate from your money.
• Where it is not, the hotel safe plus a copy is the safer trade.
• Photograph the photo page, store it encrypted, and leave a copy with someone at home.
• Never hand your passport over as a rental deposit.
• Do not trust a carry rule you read on a blog, including this one, if it does not link to the government that wrote it.

Everything here was checked on 23 August 2026 against the issuing governments named above. Because this covers legal requirements in several countries, it gets rechecked every 90 days.