Is it common for border guards to disregard available passport space like in this image?

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They have to stamp hundreds of passports every day, and I have seen them tending to use a new blank page if available.

You can still ask them politely and nicely to put the stamp in a specific page though!

What I usually do it nicely ask them to place the stamp in a specific page and quickly mention them that I'm trying to save up some page space. Here is from a page that I usually ask Sri Lankan officers to put the stamp in. I'm feeling I could squeeze one or two more here!

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It is mostly the page they find easier to put the seal in. If you have several pages and it is more work for them to find an empty page, they are likely to find the page number you said and just put the stamp there and move on.

Upvote:4

A standard passport has about 30 visa pages (varies slightly from country to country). Most passport have a 10 year validity. That means 3 visa pages per year.

For the average (leisure) traveller, which probably travels at most once a year to a country that will put a stamp (or often two) in their passport, that means there's really no need to conserve space at all, and immigration officers, stamping hundreds of passports every day, will certainly not waste even a second to save space, they'll just find the first page they can whack a stamp on in the shortest time possible. That's just human nature.

Business travellers may have more trouble with this, though I expect immigration officers to become a bit more attentive to space requirements once the visa pages start to fill up. Note also that in many countries, you can get passports with more pages, and of course you can renew your passport once it's full or close to. Some will probably have more trouble with actual visas (which take a whole page) rather than stamps.

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