We all hope when we travel that we never have to ask this question, but what do we do if we lose our passports when we are travelling, unfortunately the onus is on the carrier of the passport to hold on to this document, as if your life depended on it (and sometimes it probably does.) The first piece of advice, is try to remember where you last had it, did you leave it at the last hotel you stopped at or is it buried in a one of your suit cases? I know this sounds obvious, but when I was running a motel, I had a number of people stress out about losing documents, only to find them once they had tipped everything out on the floor. Half an hour sitting down and retracing your steps may yield a solution.

Now if you have been robbed or your car been broken into, well then you are going to have very little hope of recovering a stolen passport. In some parts of the world your passport is some ones ticket to a better life, and some devious people will go to any length to get the hands on your identity.

So the first thing you need to do if you establish that you have lost your passport, is to evaluate what else is missing, no doubt that you would have had other documentation, money, tickets and other essential items, that allow you to travel around the world.

So once you have made an inventory of your lost goods, you then need to contact the authorities, this will involve filling out a police report of the lost items, then the fun really starts, you will have to contact your embassy, or consulate, all of which will take time, it will pay for you to contact your the carrier/hotel/car rental firm that you were going to use next, as a no-show from you will be deemed as a penalise able, and you will be charged; for hotels and motels, it is generally one night, or up to 50% of the booking, if you know the flight, then you will have to notify them, in most cases your ticket can be deferred, however this is not a given, and you may have to make an insurance claim, to recover lost flights etc.

So the other major factor is that you may have lost most of your money, if thieves have taken your passports, they would have looked to also take any of your credit cards, traveller’s checks, or cash, this will cause you an issue, as you will need to confirm your identity to release funds to you from your bank.

For New Zealanders there is a site called safe travel, http://www.safetravel.govt.nz/thingsgowrong/passport.shtml

Australians https://www.passports.gov.au/Web/Renewal/LostStolen.aspx

USA http://travel.state.gov/passport/lost/us/us_848.html

UK http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Passports/Loststolenordamagedpassports/DG_174163