Originally Posted by
Italy98
I know from our last trip to Italy and Paris the desk clerk looked at our passports, quickly wrote down one or two lines and returned our passports.
Four star hotel in Milan last week, the clerk slid our passports through a reader; Mrs. Gargoyles scanned clearly, and she handed it back; mine didn't scan (it doesn't scan well at checkpoints either, even though it is much newer than hers), so she quickly typed the info.