The travel industry thrives on customer care, security, and overall convenience of customers. Different travel industries like airlines, railways, hotels, etc. must verify the identities of customers. Thousands of people come and go through multiple countries every day. Whether they are traveling by train, airplane, or visiting a hotel in a foreign country, they need to go through multiple passport check. During this process, the travel companies need to screen their customers through a seamless and secure verification process. Thus, they employ identity verification services to take care of the customer onboarding process.

Importance of Identity Verification in the Travel Industry

Today, the travel industry is subject to devious crimes like terrorism, human trafficking, smuggling, and money laundering. Criminals steal the identities of victims to cross borders and commit crimes in their name. Often the victims are investigated by law enforcement authorities. It can put the victims in unnecessary trouble. Moreover, they can claim hotel bookings, tickets, vouchers, etc to hurt these customers financially. Also, If customers are properly screened at airports, train stations, and airports, both the organization and the customers can be safeguarded from the consequences of identity theft.

Types of Travel Scams

As all the businesses are in the race of providing ease for customers and improving their operations for fast and secure services. Digitization has given great convenience to the travel industry from online flight booking to videos of live destinations. This also attracted scammers to use modern ways for scamming to use it for getting financial and other benefits. ScamWatch reported a loss of $360151 US Dollars because of traveling scams in 2019.

Some of the different types of scams pulling down the travel industry are listed below:

Ghost ticket booking

Some airlines offer a cashback facility on canceled tickets to promote their business. Scammers try to book tickets through stolen debit credit or debit cards then cancel the booked tickets. As per the policy of the airline, they get the cashback. They give another legitimate account (probably their account so that they can access that easily) for cashback and ultimately airlines transfer that money into their account. This may not seem a huge financial setback for an airline business but when scammers do that in a large number it affects the airline business greatly and chargeback can cost millions. The airline may lose its reputation because of it, also the victim of stolen debit/credit card can sue the card provider bank.

Fake Discounts and Vouchers

On social media platforms, scammers post fake discounts or vouchers on hotel booking or airline tickets and apply the condition of some advance payment. The Users try to avail the discount and transfer the advance payment to the scammers. After getting the payment, the scammers disappear with the money. This will affect the whole travel industry, the customers will lose their trust in online bookings and try to use alternate ways for it.

How to Counter ID Scams in the Travel Industry

The travel industry can protect itself from scams by implementing the Know Your Customer solution. KYC means verification of the customers before onboarding. Every customer either he is booking a hotel or a flight ticket must go through the KYC verification process. After verifying the identity of a customer through government-issued identity documents for instance ID card, driving license, or passport, a business minimizes the chances of scams. KYC ensures that the name, address, or age provided by the customer is authentic and valid.

Visa Verification Through Biometric Technology

Biometric technology can be employed for the digital visa verification process. In this process, face recognition and fingerprint scanning technology are coupled with AI-based document verification. Here, the user takes their picture using the camera and scans all of 10 of their fingertips through the digital fingerprint scanner. If the authentication process of customers is done as early as the visa processing stage, it diminishes any chances of subsequent identity-related travel crime.