3

So a friend of mine will come visit soon and he has booked two hotels for his stay in Europe (same country, same city).

These hotels bookings are used to obtain the visa. So the first hotel won't change but we he may cancel the second to find another place to stay once arrived here (A more convenient hotel depending on where we want to spend time, probably closer to my place etc... it is a big city). But we are not sure yet.

Would it be a potential issue for the visa validity if the second hotel was changed once he made it here? (I am thinking of the when the immigration needs to contact him)

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    @pnuts I know they sometimes check the hotels have not been cancelled upon arrival, which will not be the case, but I didn't found an information on later checks, so I imagine it is fine. Just wanted to make sure it was all fine. Thank you
    – smagnan
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 10:43
  • Generally speaking, it does not and should not matter but see travel.stackexchange.com/questions/44258/…
    – Relaxed
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 14:12

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

Nobody will check later. Indeed, they want to be sure that you have a place to stay. If you have booked an hotel, it means you certainly have funds to cover your stay. Ok some will tell that some hotels can be booked without a credit card but for a lot of hotels, you can't perform any booking without a credit card.

So the answer is that I don't think it will affect the visa validity. As long as he has a valid booking, it will be ok.

Also keep in mind that booking checks are randomly performed (probably when they have a doubt) and certainly not systematic... It would be too complex to always perform it.

Improve this answer
2

You get in contact with immigration extremely rarely. They most certainly won't chase every traveler within their borders, in 2015 there were 14.3 million Schengen visas issued, it's quite near impossible to keep track of that many people across 26 states without very seriously compromising freedom of movement of citizens as well (you would need to check paperwork at checkpoints Soviet Union style). It is estimated that every year people make 1.3 billion crossings of the EU’s internal borders. DB German Rail alone has a ridership of 1.9 billion yearly. Checking that many people just to fish out the very few who carry a visa and even fewer who would be violating their visa terms just doesn't make any financial sense.

Also, there's no reason to. They want you to leave at a given time and to not work but what do you do and where you go between your landing and leaving is really a non-issue.

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .