Is it? Surely this simply and proportionately deals with exactly the risks above?

Not only that. In places like Thailand it is a key part of anti human traffic and child sex abuse strategy. Because it is so common, staff in most hotels are trained to spot it.

It deals with those risks, and it's still a disproportionate overreach.

I don't understand your point. In "Breaking Bad" if he had a hotel instead of a car wash, he could claim it was 95% occupied every night. Thereby washing large quantities of cash. In the EU do they have to keep IDs for a certain amount of time or something? If so then you just keep a few on file and hand those over when asked.

It depends on countries, in Italy the data on the ID of guests (of a hotel or similar) is transmitted electronically (within 24 hours) to the Police.

This since a few years, 2013 I believe, until then you had to send (via snail mail) the "records" or bring them daily to the nearest Police (or Carabinieri) station.

The provision is since 1978, it was a Law approved in a short time due to the "emergency of fighting terrorism".

Thanks that makes so much more sense. That would be harder to work around. Maybe give out "free" rooms as promotions then on the books claim they paid 1K a night and another 1k in room service or something.

Spain does the same thing.