Many British travellers are far too ready to hand over passports while on trips, research out today showed.

More than 250,000 passports are lost or stolen each year in the UK alone. Yet half of travellers think nothing of handing over passports to hotel receptionists, even though they are not obliged to do so, the research found.

Nearly six million passports have been left with a complete stranger as a deposit in foreign shops in the past five years.

British tourists also often ignore safety deposit boxes in hotel rooms - with 12% preferring to leave passports in suitcases, 3% leaving them in unlocked drawers and 1% hiding passports under the mattress.

For their part, hoteliers have stored 3.7 million British passports in open and unsecured places- such as pigeon holes - over the last five years, according to the research commissioned by HBOS General Insurance Identitycare.

The leaving of passports lying around in hotel reception areas was "no longer an acceptable practice", the insurer's chief executive Colin Whitehair said. "We would certainly like to see international hotels taking the threat of identity theft more seriously by ensuring that all retained passports are locked away in a secure place," he said.

"To our knowledge there is no legal requirement in any country that makes it mandatory for a guest to physically leave their passport with a hotel reception. The only such mandates that we are aware of are those dictated by hotels themselves. Travellers wishing to clarify this situation should probably check the protocol directly with the hotel."

The insurer suggested that guests ask the receptionist to make a physical note of their passport's appropriate details. Alternatively travellers can take a photocopy of the relevant pages before leaving home and hand that in instead.

Ultimately travellers are urged never to let their passport or even their passport details be stored in an unsecured place.