Guest registration in the Basque Country 2026: the Ertzaintza and Registro Hostelero guide

If your property is in Araba/Álava, Bizkaia or Gipuzkoa — a hotel, a guesthouse, a rural house or a tourist apartment —, the obligation to register your guests and report them to the police is the same as in the rest of Spain, but the channel is different. Basque accommodations send nothing to SES.HOSPEDAJES: they report their reservations and traveller reports to the Ertzaintza, through the Registro Hostelero of the Basque Government’s Department of Security. This guide explains why, what has to be reported, how to register your establishment and how HazCheckin submits it all for you automatically.

Why the Basque Country doesn’t use SES.HOSPEDAJES

Public-safety powers in the Basque Country are devolved, and the Ertzaintza performs there the functions the Policía Nacional and the Guardia Civil perform elsewhere in Spain. Guest registration is one of those powers.

When the Ministry of the Interior launched SES.HOSPEDAJES to implement Royal Decree 933/2021, the Basque Department of Security passed its own regulation — the Order of 25 November 2022, which sets how Basque accommodations report — and published the technical file format in the Basque Official Gazette. The Ertzaintza itself confirmed in 2024 that accommodations in its territory keep reporting through it after RD 933/2021 came into force.

In practice:

• If all your properties are in the Basque Country, you don’t need a SES.HOSPEDAJES account or Ministry credentials.
• If you have properties inside and outside the Basque Country, you need both channels: the Ertzaintza for the Basque ones and SES.HOSPEDAJES for the rest (or the Mossos d’Esquadra if you also have one in Catalonia).

What gets reported, and when

Unlike other channels, the Ertzaintza distinguishes two communications per stay:

1. The accommodation reservation (“RH”): reported as soon as the booking is made, with the contract details (reference, arrival and departure dates, number of people and rooms, payment method) and whatever is already known about the booker. A cancellation must be reported too.
2. The traveller report (“PV”): reported when the stay begins, with the full details of every person staying, minors included: name and surnames, document type and number, the support number of a DNI or NIE, date of birth, nationality, sex, home address, phone or email and, for minors, their relationship with the accompanying adult.

The deadline is 24 hours from each event: from the reservation and from arrival. And the documentary record must be kept for three years, as RD 933/2021 requires.

Some specific Registro Hostelero rules worth knowing, because the service rejects the communication when they aren’t met:

• The traveller report must include one contract holder who is an adult with a document.
• Adults with a DNI or NIE must give the document’s support number, and Spanish nationals must be reported with both surnames.
• Every minor under 18 must carry their relationship with the accompanying adult, and Spanish minors aged 14 or over must be identified with their DNI.
• The contract date of the report is the date the check-in card is signed on arrival: the arrival date must be that same day or the next one.
• The home address is mandatory; for Spanish addresses, with the municipality (INE code or name) and a valid postal code.

Non-compliance carries the same penalties as in the rest of Spain (Organic Law 4/2015): fines from €100 to €600 for minor offences and from €601 to €30,000 for serious ones, such as not being registered or not reporting the data.

How to register with the Ertzaintza’s Registro Hostelero

The procedure lives on the Ertzaintza portal, under Servicios a la ciudadanía → Seguridad Privada → Actividades relevantes → Registro Hostelero. You need an accepted digital certificate (Izenpe, electronic DNI, FNMT or Camerfirma) and Izenpe’s Idazki Desktop application installed to sign the forms.

1. Request the establishment’s registration with the establishment registration form: name, category, owner’s company name and tax id, capacity, address and contact person. If the accommodation was already registered, retrieve its code instead of creating another.
2. Write down the establishment code the Ertzaintza assigns you. Together with the owner’s CIF or NIF (the “lessor code”), it identifies your accommodation in every communication. If you can’t find it, ask arreta@seg.euskadi.eus quoting the owner’s CIF.
3. Register the people or companies that will report with the user request form. This is where you authorise your software: choose “Alta” as the operation, “Empresa” as the entity type, enter the tax id of the company that will report on your behalf, add it to the requested operations, pick the “Producción” environment and sign.

The establishment’s owner maintains that list of users (additions, removals and changes). One user can be authorised for several establishments, and an establishment can have several users.

How reporting works: portal, file or web service

Once registered, there are three ways to report:

• Portal form: you type each reservation or report by hand into the Ertzaintza’s “Registro Hotelero” application, with its establishment, contract, payment and guest blocks.
• XML file: you upload, in the “Envío fichero” tab, an XML in the official gazette format, up to 400 communications per file. The portal validates the whole file and tells you, communication by communication, what’s wrong.
• Web service: your software connects directly to the Ertzaintza’s XML communication service, signing every submission with the digital certificate of the authorised company. It’s the only fully automatic channel, and it’s the one HazCheckin uses.

Whatever the channel, every accepted communication gets a request number (a unique id) you can look up in the portal’s “Acuses recibo” tab, filtering by establishment, dates, communication type or contract reference. There you see the state of each submission (“Correcto”, “Recibido” or “Error”) and, for traveller reports, you can print each person’s card.

How HazCheckin helps if your property is in the Basque Country

In HazCheckin the flow for a Basque property is the same as for any other, with two differences: we don’t ask you for SES.HOSPEDAJES credentials and the submission is automatic end to end, because we connect to the Ertzaintza’s web service and sign every communication with HazCheckin’s certificate.

You only need two things to enable it:

1. Authorise HazCheckin in the Registro Hostelero: the establishment’s owner registers us as a user through the user request form (entity type “Empresa”, tax id B26859876, JOINBLE DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE SL). Without that step the Ertzaintza rejects the submissions even if everything else is right.
2. Enter, in the property’s settings, the owner’s CIF or NIF and the establishment code. HazCheckin detects from the postal code that the property is in the Basque Country and shows those two fields in the legal section instead of the SES credentials.

From there, HazCheckin does the rest:

• Reports the reservation as soon as it’s created (by hand, from your PMS or from your Airbnb or Booking calendar), with whatever booker details it already has, and retries on its own once the guest provides their contact at check-in.
• Every guest gets their digital check-in link and fills in, before arriving, everything the Registro Hostelero requires: document scanned with the camera and verified, support number, date of birth, home address, phone or email, minors’ relationship and signature.
• On arrival day, once everyone has completed check-in, it sends the traveller report with every person and stores on the booking the request number the Ertzaintza returns. If the service rejects any field, we show it on the booking with the exact missing item and retry hourly once you fix it.
• The record is kept for the three years the law requires, with each guest’s verified identity and signature, and you can always resend a communication with one click or find it in the portal by its contract reference.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to register with SES.HOSPEDAJES if I only have properties in the Basque Country?

No. Basque accommodations report exclusively to the Ertzaintza. You don’t need a SES.HOSPEDAJES account or Ministry credentials, and in HazCheckin you can activate your property without that step.

I have properties in the Basque Country and in other regions — what do I do?

You need each territory’s channel: registration with the Ertzaintza’s Registro Hostelero for the Basque ones, SES.HOSPEDAJES for the rest of Spain and the Mossos d’Esquadra for Catalonia. In HazCheckin each property uses its channel automatically by postal code, from a single dashboard.

What are the lessor code and the establishment code?

The lessor code is the CIF or NIF of the person or company that owns the accommodation. The establishment code is the identifier the Ertzaintza assigns to each accommodation when it’s registered. HazCheckin needs both to report on your behalf; if you don’t have them, ask arreta@seg.euskadi.eus.

Why do I have to register HazCheckin as a user?

Because on every signed submission the Ertzaintza checks that the signing company is authorised for that establishment. It’s how the Registro Hostelero lets a third party (a PMS or software like HazCheckin) report on the owner’s behalf. The owner does it once per establishment.

What about minors?

Their details are reported too, with their date of birth and their relationship with the accompanying adult. Minors under 14 don’t need a document; from 14, Spanish nationals must be identified with their DNI. HazCheckin’s check-in asks every minor under 18 for the relationship when the property is in the Basque Country.

How do I cancel a reservation I already reported?

The Ertzaintza’s web service has no cancellation operation: it’s done from the Registro Hostelero portal. In HazCheckin you’ll find the request number and the contract reference on the booking to locate it quickly in the “Acuses recibo” tab.

Is there support if the portal gives me trouble?

Yes. The Ertzaintza’s Private Security Unit answers at alojados.ertzaintza@ertzaintza.eus and on 946 07 99 30, and technical questions about the service go to arreta@seg.euskadi.eus.