Talk to any hotelier about the guest journey, and the same themes tend to emerge: personalisation, seamless booking, loyalty, guest experience. Technology is expected to enhance all these moments. But there’s one step that often gets overlooked and yet it underpins the entire guest relationship: identity verification.
It’s not the most glamorous part of the journey. It doesn’t appear in glossy marketing campaigns or brand storytelling. But it’s the first real moment of truth between guest and brand. And in an age of rising fraud, compliance pressure and digital expectations, getting identity right isn’t just a security concern. It’s a competitive edge.
Identity: a poorly managed touchpoint
Let’s start with the reality in many hotel operations today. Identity is either handled manually (a scan of a passport at the front desk) or partially digitised through fragmented systems. In the best-case scenario, the process is slow and adds friction. In the worst, it’s inconsistent, vulnerable to fraud, and damages trust before the guest even reaches their room.
Even those who have embraced remote or mobile check-in often rely on on-device biometrics or centralised databases — approaches that are increasingly showing their limitations. A system that works beautifully on an iPhone might fail on a hotel kiosk. A database that stores guest credentials may quickly become a liability if it’s breached.
And when things go wrong, guests don’t care about the backend complexity. They just remember that your hotel didn’t recognise them, didn’t trust them, or made them jump through hoops.
Hospitality has always operated on trust. But that trust is now being tested in new ways. Fraud is no longer limited to stolen credit cards. It’s becoming more sophisticated, with fake IDs, synthetic identities, and social engineering attacks targeting hotel systems. Front-desk staff are rarely trained to spot these threats.
At the same time, poor identity flows frustrate loyal guests, and create extra operational burden. The friction may be subtle: an extra form, a longer wait at the front desk, or being asked to show ID twice during the same stay — but it adds up. And the guest, quite reasonably, doesn’t differentiate between “security policy” and “bad experience”.
When identity systems fail, hotels pay the price in three areas: fraud exposure, guest satisfaction, and operations efficiency. The industry has spent years improving PMS, CRM, and revenue management tools. But if identity is broken, everything downstream suffers.
Building trust from the very first touchpoint
So what’s the alternative? One emerging answer is decentralised identity. Unlike centralised systems (where the hotel owns and stores guest data) or on-device models (where verification depends on local hardware), decentralised identity allows guests to control their data while still enabling real-time, secure verification.
A guest holds a digital identity on their device — verified and cryptographically secured. When booking or checking in, they consent to share only what’s needed (for example, age and face match, not full ID). The hotel verifies the identity in real time, but never stores the data long-term. The process is seamless, privacy-respecting, and fraud-resistant.
Combined with advanced facial biometrics (ideally with certified liveness detection and anti-spoofing to combat sophisticated identity frauds) this model offers something rare in hospitality tech: a win for security, for guest experience, and for compliance.
The benefits go beyond check-in. With a verified identity, hotels can personalise service across stays, recognise guests even on third-party channels, and create secure, passwordless access to loyalty platforms and digital room keys — all without hadling guest’s IDs to third parties and therefore without compromising their own security.
This is not just about fraud prevention. It’s about reframing identity as part of the guest experience. Hotels that treat identity as a back-office function will continue to struggle with friction, drop-off, and rising fraud. Hotels that recognise it as a foundational part of guest trust (and invest accordingly) will be better positioned to meet the demands of modern travellers.
The hospitality industry has made huge strides in digital transformation over the last decade. But if we don’t solve the identity challenge, we’re building on shaky ground.
As digital expectations evolve and threats increase, one thing is clear: the guest journey starts with identity. It’s time we gave it the attention it deserves.
Pedro Torres
CEO and co-founder
Youverse
