How to apply for a German Schengen visa, staying in a small hotel with no registration #
I need to apply for a German Schengen visa for tourism. I am staying in a small hotel, booked through booking.com. When filing out the visa form the following fields have to be filled out:
- Reference type: hotel
- Name of register in which the hotel is registered: Register of Crafts and Trades, Commercial Register, Register of Partnerships, Register of Associations, Register of Cooperatives or Other register?
- Location of register?
- Registration number?
- Name of the contact person?
When I requested the hotel to provide the information for 2-5 the reply was:
Our Hotel has no registration number. Hotels owned by a single person do not need to register in any register of crafts and trades
Questions:
- Does it sound legit? Are single-person run hotels in Germany in fact exempt from registration? Does the fact that the hotel exempt from registration says something bad about a hotel? The reviews and pictures look OK to me. The hotel in question is the Hotel im Rheintal
- What do I put for questions 2, 3, 4 in the Schengen Visa application form? The hotel lists value added tax ID# and the name of the responsible local authority.
After inquiring specifically
What is your number in Gewerberegister
The hotel answer was:
as singleowner of a Hotel are we not registered in the Gewerberegister.
I believe this is a reason for me to cancel the booking and look elsewhere. It's a pity as the hotel is in just the place I wanted to stay. :(
UPD. Official update from German mission in the U.S.A:
You only need to enter the address of your hotel + phone no.
Best Answer
Does it sound legit? Are single-person run hotels in Germany in fact exempt from registration?
Not a lawyer, but: No.
This would be against the basic ideas of all relevant laws, and a quick search turned up no single hint of any (hotel-relevant) exception (but it turned up many confirmations that I'm right).
Basically, all things with the purpose to continously earn money are "Gewerbe" and need to be registered as such. There are some exceptions, but running a Hotel is lightyears away from them. It doesn't matter if the person has employees or not, it doesn't matter if the person has another job, it doesn't matter (much) how much profit this person makes, etc.etc. ... Depending on the type of Gewerbe, there may be additional requirements (Hotel? IT consultant? Gun merchant? All different), and the structure matters too (employees, stocks, ...), but nothing overrides the obligation to register the Gewerbe.
If the hotel really isn't registered:
A likely explanation is tax evasion. (Nonetheless, it could very well be a great place to stay. For tourists, it doesn't imply a high risk of being scammed, robbed or something like that, and it says nothing about room quality etc.).
About your visa, without a register number, this "hotel" obviously won't be usable for an electronic form "leaving you no choice", as you said.
But since we now know that the hotel (apparently) has a (valid?) tax number...
Like chirlu suggested in the comments: Ask again, specifically about the Gewerberegister (ie. the German word). It's possible they misunderstood your first mail, especially because there are other company registers too (where a small/medium hotel doesn't need to register).
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