Huh? Every time I stayed at a hotel in China they tear apart my passport looking for the date of entry stamp, and the relevant visa. By law they have to take a picture of the visa and send it to local police. Now of course they can "forget" to do that, but only if you have a great relationship with the hotel in question.

100% agree. Just had a pic taken an hour ago at a hotel of: front of passport, info page, and visa.

Me thinks 'moondog' exclusively stays at the "Vincent Executive Hotel & Suites"! ;)

Really? In Guangdong, I never had more than a quick bored look at my passport, and a scan/photocopy of what seemed like the first page given how quick it was (certainly too fast to fish out the current stamp out of scores on the passport).

Interesting. Must be a regional then?

Could very well be.

And I can confirm that when I entered Shenzhen visa-free on Dec 2nd, 2023, so just 24h after the start of the program, it didn't raise an eyebrow at the hotel.

They made no pictures of your face? They made that each time we checked in a hotel.

Dang. There really are crazy differences it seems. (Never had a pic of myself taken.)

My expérience few weeks ago wasn't that strict. They scanned in my passeport, that was it. Forget if they looked for the visa but they didn't scan that in or look at stamps.

The machines are usually right after the echannel gates. They are call something like “self printing of entry proof” or similar. You put your passport photo page on the reader, it asks if you want to print out the receipt and you press 打印. Then a small piece of paper comes out showing your entry date and entry location. They also have these machines when leaving for printing exit proof.

That was my experience prior to 2023 as well. However, during my recent trip to China in December, I stayed at over ten Hilton-brand hotels and not a single one asked to see my visa which is in a separate passport.

That might be the key. All my recent stays were within Guangdong.

Some do and some don't. This appears to be specific to the hotel.

IME, the local PSB is more likely to impose hoops like this than the hotel. Remember, hotels generally want to keep check-in as resource light as possible, and the passport drill (for ~5% of their guests) itself already gums up the process.

This has now been extended to Irish (and earlier Swiss) nationals

Do we know for sure from what date onward Ireland and Switzerland have Visa-free 15-day entry?
Immediately? Sometime in the future?