Traveling industry has been booming ever since the digital era entered into the picture with its innovative tools and products that enables travelers to book flights, sign up for tourist trips and compare hotel prices from the comfort of their homes. Although, the trend started with bulky desktop computers but now they have been mostly replaced with slick tablets and smartphones. Travel apps and booking platforms have made it easier for travelers to arrange holiday trips to both domestic and foreign resorts. But if on one hand, all this convenient technology has enabled travel industry to earn higher revenue than it has also caused a lot of inconvenience for the businesses involved in the travel industry in the form of payment frauds and an ever-increasing number of complaints about identity theft.
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How much Identity theft costs?
A total of USD 850 Million is the loss sustained by the traveling industry because of false identification information and ID-based fraud. A major chunk of that loss is targeted towards airline business that has suffered annually USD 650 million because of identity frauds. The biggest form of identity theft is carried out in the form of false personal and financial information that is used to reserve a flight, book a hotel room and even pay for items during a shopping trip.
Who is affected by Identity theft in Traveling Industry?
As you can imagine that both individual users, as well as businesses, have to sustain the burnt of the identity theft in this case. Travelers become a victim of identity theft when employees of business use their personal and financial information to purchase items or avail services that they are not entitled to avail in the first place. As travelers have moved back to their city of origin, or country of origin in case of a foreign vacation, it takes quite sometime before any illegal activity is reported to original identity holder.
For businesses involved in the traveling industry, the cost of identity theft is also significant because they have to deal constantly with cash back requests from original users for the payments that were processed from their accounts or credit cards.
What is driving digital Identity theft?
It is important to understand that identity theft has been there for years now, even before internet companies started rolling out products and platforms to integrate traveling business with customer comfort. But the introduction of digital channels has literally transformed the identity management landscape for online businesses including the traveling industry.
The biggest factor that has led to a monumental increment in digital identity theft is the constant data breaches that keep on happening at large tech companies where personal and financial information of the users is regularly compromised due to sophisticated hacking attempts. These credentials than land on the dark web where special marketplaces have been set up by hackers to sell personal and financial information of authentic users.
Protection against Digital Identity theft
But just as the latest tech has introduced the menace of digital identity theft, there have been solutions developed across the globe that can check the authenticity of the credentials provided for availing services and paying for expenses incurred during a traveling trip. Businesses across the globe can utilize these identity verification services to deter identity theft frauds and online payment scams.
Although most of the identity verification services offer limited support when it comes to identity documents from multiple countries but there are some smart AI-based verification services that can verify the identity of customers regardless of their country of origin. They check the authenticity of identity documents provided by users to check that whether the claimed identity by a user is true or not?
Conclusion
The travel industry is booming at the moment and has the potential to generate even higher revenues. A technically innovative solution for identity verification can supplement the revenue growth for every business involved in the traveling industry. Swift processing of personal details will not only ensure that only genuine users are served by traveling businesses but so that the entire user experience remains frictionless during the online booking of airline flights, hotel rooms and traveling trips.

