Best Guest vs. Manual Reporting via portal.minv.sk

What the law says

For a foreigner, the accommodation provider must ensure that the official form reporting the stay is filled in and delivered to the police unit within five days of accommodating the guest; it can also be delivered through the electronic service introduced for this purpose (Section 113(c) of Act No. 404/2011 Coll.). Under Section 2(2), a foreigner is “anyone who is not a citizen of the Slovak Republic”, so also a guest from Czechia, Germany or Poland. The guest signs the completed form (Section 112(1)(j) for EU, EEA and Swiss nationals, Section 111(1)(l) for guests from third countries).

The Act speaks of five days, not working days, so weekends and public holidays count towards the deadline. Whether the deadline moves when the fifth day falls on a weekend or public holiday is not expressly addressed by the Act, so do not count on it. Breaching the duties under Section 113 is an administrative offence for which the police unit imposes a fine of up to €3,300 (Section 119(1)(a) and (2)). For details, including how the deadline is counted, see the page Act No. 404/2011 Coll. on the residence of foreigners, and for a step-by-step procedure the guide to reporting foreigners’ stays.

What manual reporting via portal.minv.sk actually involves

The Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic accepts the form in person at a police unit, by post or through the electronic service. The “Zápis do knihy ubytovaných” electronic service at portal.minv.sk, however, is only for a registered accommodation provider: you apply for registration at the Directorate of the Border and Foreign Police, and the people who will report on your behalf need an identity card with a chip (eID) with an activated qualified electronic signature (KEP). Then, for every booking with foreign guests:

1. You read the details from a booking-channel message, an ID photo or a paper form.
2. You log in to the e-service and enter each guest into the form — among other things name, date and place of birth, nationality, document number, stay from – to and purpose of stay. The Ministry offers two ways: filling in the form guest by guest, or a bulk import of an XML file if your software creates one for you.
3. You sign and submit the filing. Confirmations of compliance with the reporting duty are delivered to your electronic mailbox at slovensko.sk.
4. You enter the guests in the guest register (kniha ubytovaných). Section 24 of Act No. 253/1998 Coll. requires you to keep it for all guests including Slovaks, and for foreigners it must also contain nationality and date of birth (Section 113(b) of Act No. 404/2011 Coll.). Despite its name, the “Zápis do knihy ubytovaných” e-service does not replace it.

On top of that, the Ministry states that the duty to ensure the official form is filled in, to keep the forms for two years and to present the originals to the police on request remains in place with electronic reporting too.

Multiply that by every foreign guest and every booking and you get real time and real risk when a booking arrives on a busy day and the report is overlooked.

Where the manual process breaks down

The problem is usually not that guests are not reported at all — it is the one booking that arrives late in the evening, the one guest with a blurry ID photo, the one EU guest someone assumes does not need to be reported, or the one week when an employee is sick and nobody checks the booking inbox. A single unreported guest is enough for an administrative offence, and a fine can be imposed for another three years after the breach (Section 119(3)). In setting its amount, the police also take into account whether it is a repeated breach.

With electronic filing, on top of that, only the people you authorised at registration and who hold an eID with a KEP can report. When they are not available, the deadline keeps running.

What changes with Best Guest

The guest fills in online check-in themselves before arrival, so nobody on your side copies details from a message or an ID photo any more. Format and required fields are checked as the form is filled in.

From the same data, Best Guest prepares the foreigner report as an XML file in the format the Ministry of the Interior publishes for import into the “Zápis do knihy ubytovaných” e-service:

• per reservation or for a chosen period, depending on how you want to report,
• for all guests without Slovak citizenship, including EU, EEA and Swiss nationals; Slovak guests are not included in the file,
• after a check in the preview: before downloading, you see every guest and Best Guest shows what needs completing. A guest with an unresolved problem is left out of the file.

The file is always generated afresh from the current data, so after a correction, or later, you can download it again at any time. You upload it in the e-service at portal.minv.sk, sign it and submit it; the confirmation arrives in your slovensko.sk mailbox just as with a manual filing.

The same data also feeds the guest register (kniha ubytovaných) with all guests including Slovaks. You download it as a PDF for a month, a year or a custom period, including the guest’s signature from online check-in. On top of that, Best Guest calculates the accommodation tax for each stay.

What does not change

• You do the filing. There is no publicly documented interface for automatic submission of the report in Slovakia yet, so you upload and sign the file under your own accommodation provider access. You need the registration with the Ministry of the Interior and an eID with a KEP just as you do without Best Guest.
• You watch the deadline. The documents are ready right after check-in, but submitting them within five days of accommodating the guest is up to you.
• Best Guest does not fill in the official form. The guest signs electronically during online check-in, and you will also find their signature in the PDF guest register. How the guest’s electronic signature relates to the Ministry’s requirement to keep signed forms for two years is something we cover in the article on the foreigner’s electronic signature when reporting a stay.
• The XML file is for the e-service only. If you report in person or by post, you fill in the form yourself; you do, however, have the guests’ data together from check-in.

How to switch from manual reporting

1. Sign up for Best Guest — the first 14 days are free, no payment card required (pricing).
2. If you are not yet using the Ministry of the Interior e-service, apply for accommodation provider registration. You then enter your facility’s ID from the e-service in the Best Guest settings — without it, Best Guest does not create the XML file.
3. Put the online check-in link into the automated messages on Airbnb, Booking.com or in your channel manager.