Introduction
If you work with travel and hospitality companies, you already know the uncomfortable truth: the guest journey moved online, but fraud moved faster.
The “front desk” isn’t a desk anymore. It’s a booking page, a loyalty portal, a mobile app, or a third-party travel interface. Every login, every password reset, every “book now” click sits on one fragile assumption: the person is real.
And when that assumption breaks, you don’t just lose a transaction. You lose trust. You lose loyalty. You lose revenue. Sometimes you lose a lot more.
Here’s where it gets interesting: most identity incidents in hospitality don’t start with sophisticated hacking. They start with weak consumer identity workflows registration that invites bots, login flows that accept risky traffic, and verification that happens too late.
So yes, we’re talking about CIAM. Specifically, the decision that keeps showing up in boardrooms and engineering standups across the industry:
Do you build your own Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) stack, or do you buy a purpose-built solution?
This blog gives you a clear framework pulled directly from our downloadable guide to help you decide fast, with less regret later.
What is the hospitality industry, and why does identity sit at the center of it now?
What does the hospitality industry mean in 2025? It means experiences delivered through digital touchpoints before the guest ever arrives.
A quick way to explain what is hospitality industry today:
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It’s bookings and upgrades on mobile
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It’s loyalty points treated like currency
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It’s digital check-in and account-based personalization
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It’s customer service across apps, email, kiosks, and web
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It’s risk because fraudsters follow money, and hospitality holds plenty of it
If you’re wondering what do you know about the hospitality industry that matters for identity, start here:
Hospitality runs on repeat guests, loyalty accounts, stored payment data, and time-bound inventory. That combo attracts fraud.
And the fraud isn’t subtle.
The fraud playbook is hitting travel and hospitality services right now
The travel sector faces aggressive scamming patterns like bot requests and fake login attempts. From our guide, these are some of the most common fraud types impacting the industry.
1. Stolen payment details
Fraudsters use stolen credit card information to run transactions. If verification fails, the business eats the loss.
A real incident in Gatineau, Quebec, led to a travel agency losing $20,000 due to ten fraudulent bookings paid with stolen payment information.
That’s not a rounding error. That’s a budget conversation.
2. Hotel price spike schemes
Fraudsters using stolen payment info can collude with hotels to raise room prices and push chargebacks to travel agencies using fake consumers who don’t exist.
This mess spreads beyond one booking. It creates operational drag, disputes, and reputational damage.
3. The last-minute buyer
Last-minute purchases block investigation. Once check-in happens, cancellations become harder due to legal reasons.
One study cited in the guide found that same-day hotel bookings are 4.3x more likely to be scammed than bookings made well in advance.
That’s a pattern. And it’s predictable.
Now ask yourself: do your systems treat last-minute behavior like a normal checkout event? Most do.
That’s where teams usually go wrong.
Why CIAM became non-negotiable for travel and hospitality companies
To reduce fraud and protect consumer experience, many travel businesses invest in CIAM — Consumer Identity and Access Management where onboarding, verification, and authentication run through a single identity layer.
CIAM isn’t a “nice security add-on.” It’s the infrastructure that decides who gets in, who gets blocked, and who gets friction.
From the guide, CIAM delivers clear benefits for the hospitality sector:
Helps ensure only legit consumers use your platform
Bots don’t just brute-force login pages. They scrape prices. They clone pages. They copy site content to resell.
Competitors can even use bots to scrape pricing so their site looks cheaper. Scalping bots can copy entire website code and develop content for reuse.
CIAM helps stop that. It puts a real gate in front of your digital storefront.
Fewer documentation requirements
With an effective CIAM, travel brands reduce heavy documentation steps and rely on safe registration and login to verify identity.
This matters because modern guests avoid oversharing personal documents with third parties — especially when privacy breaches keep making headlines.
Enhancing consumer experience
Strong CIAM improves UX through seamless authentication, reduced registration fatigue, and a single-view interface that strengthens security for both guests and the business.
Multi-factor authentication lets consumers verify identity in a few taps. A good CIAM makes verification feel automatic and hassle-free.
If the guest thinks, “This login feels easy,” you’ve already won half the battle.
Why RPA-driven CIAM changes the game for hospitality operations
The guide makes a clear point: your CIAM should support RPA-driven automation (Robotic Process Automation). This is what separates basic login tools from a system that supports scale across properties, brands, and digital channels.
Here are the key differentiators.
Onboarding of new applications
RPA-driven onboarding reduces paperwork and reduces human errors. It creates consistent experiences for every user, strengthens brand impression, and supports repeat engagement.
You don’t want one brand app to feel smooth and another to feel broken. Guests notice.
Distribution list automation
Automation helps manage emails and communication with large groups of users while ensuring users are verified and worth targeting.
This reduces outreach waste and keeps your marketing database cleaner.
Customized user registration module
A personalized registration module matches brand tone and design and collects the right data to authenticate users while safeguarding privacy expectations.
Hospitality branding matters. Your identity flows should look and feel like your brand, not a third-party widget taped onto the experience.
User consolidation and migration
Automation supports user consolidation, configuration, and migration across databases without constant manual effort.
It helps teams focus on removing suspicious accounts, evicting spam/bots, and consolidating the right user profiles.
If your loyalty program has duplicate identities, personalization breaks. Fraud detection breaks. CX teams lose confidence in data. Fix identity, and the rest gets easier.
Build vs Buy CIAM: the decision travel and hospitality companies keep revisiting
As the guide says: companies can build CIAM from scratch with in-house professionals or buy ready-made solutions from CIAM experts.
And yes some travel brands have edge cases that generic products don’t handle well.
But building in-house often triggers:
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budget trouble
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technical debt
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quality compromises
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harder verification workflows
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worse consumer experience
Instead of solving fraud, teams sometimes make consumer verification harder — for real guests.
That’s the trap.
So let’s make this simple: before you decide, answer the six questions from the guide. They’re practical. They cut through bias.
6 questions to answer before you decide whether to build or buy
1. What important features do you need in your solution?
You can’t pick a solution without knowing the problems you’re solving.
Ask what features you require that you can’t purchase from an expert provider — and whether those features create real competitive advantage.
If you don’t gain meaningful advantage over competitors using readymade solutions, buying makes sense.
Build only when your needs are unique and directly tied to how your business operates.
2. How much cost would your company incur for either option?
Budget for both paths and count hidden costs.
If your team lacks CIAM expertise, you may hire a freelancer or smaller firm to build parts of your in-house system.
From the guide, factor in:
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technical debt (time + money for code changes and database/storage updates)
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time and effort to test and develop internally
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opportunity cost (what your team could build instead if you buy)
Only choose in-house build when it truly saves money — not when it “feels cheaper.”
3. How much will it cost if you don’t execute the plan?
Discuss consequences of doing nothing.
If not building means your company lacks a necessary capability that changes user experience and consumer management, build becomes urgent.
But if not buying creates technical deficit, resource waste, and a buggy interface — you may pay twice to rebuild later.
If you can’t source tools and resources for a proper build, risk climbs fast.
4. By when do you need the software ready to run?
Building from scratch takes time.
The longer your platform runs without reliable CIAM, the higher the chance of fraud and malpractice.
If you need CIAM live quickly and your team can’t deliver fast, buying a readymade plugin that runs within hours makes more sense.
Bug fixes often come handled by the vendor teams.
5. Do you have developers who can get the job done?
This question is more direct than most teams like.
Are your in-house experts capable of producing a CIAM system as strong as one built by teams who’ve already tested it with multiple companies?
You rarely know until the product ships. By then, the cost is already spent.
Buying often becomes a one-time investment with long-term reliability.
6. Can your team provide consumer assistance?
Early-stage builds come with bugs. Guests will hit them.
If a consumer runs into problems while registering, your support team needs answers fast.
Fixes require time. Downtime costs bookings. Guests move to competitors.
Buying software like LoginRadius gives you consumer support working alongside your team to solve issues consumers run into.
That shared responsibility matters in hospitality, where “later” equals lost bookings.
Where LoginRadius fits: CIAM built for hospitality identity realities
Now let’s be blunt. The reason many top travel and hospitality companies buy instead of build comes down to risk, speed, and repeatability.
LoginRadius provides a secure, robust backend for consumer management — and lets you add login pages to apps and sites in minutes.
From the guide, LoginRadius helps hospitality and travel brands:
Prevent account takeover
Data breaches expose billions of records. Account takeover attacks target loyalty accounts, payment info, and personal data.
LoginRadius helps prevent fraudsters from taking control of legitimate consumer accounts and accessing payment details and personal information.
Deliver seamless user experiences
Registration and login experiences shape first impressions.
LoginRadius supports:
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streamlined SSO
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self-service registration
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password management
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transactional security
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API focus
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progressive profiling
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data encryption
This combination drives consumer engagement and supports compliance with user expectations.
Securely connect third-party apps
Hospitality stacks include booking engines, CRMs, marketing tools, and operational systems.
LoginRadius integrations sync consumer data with third-party apps and allow data flow customization so the right platforms get the right information.
Secure accounts with MFA and encryption
LoginRadius provides multi-factor authentication and detailed encryption for added security.
It also supports unique verification processes, so even if a hacker gets past the first barrier, they can’t move deeper.
That layered approach protects brand trust.
Best customer identity solutions for travel and hospitality 2025: what smart teams evaluate first
You asked for the keyword best customer identity solutions for travel and hospitality 2025, so let’s treat it with respect.
The best solutions in 2025 don’t win on feature lists alone. They win on outcomes:
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Less fraud and fewer chargebacks
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Fewer fake accounts and bot attacks
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Faster onboarding across apps and properties
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Better guest experience without heavy verification steps
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Cleaner loyalty identity data
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Fewer support tickets tied to login and registration issues
Looking to choose the right approach? Use the six questions above as your filter. They expose whether you need customization, speed, vendor support, or all of it.
And if you want the detailed build vs buy framework in one place…then download the guide.
Conclusion
Fraud doesn’t stop after one incident. It repeats. It adapts. It shows up in new forms.
And identity sits at the center of that fight.
A secure digital identity solution is no longer optional in travel and hospitality. It protects user information, secures transactions, and keeps the consumer experience smooth.
Your decision to build or buy CIAM shapes how your brand handles:
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fraud attempts
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bot traffic
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last-minute booking risk
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loyalty account protection
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identity support at scale
If you want the fastest path to a secure, seamless login experience with versatile implementation, LoginRadius gives you a proven CIAM foundation built for real-world pressure.
Ready to make the build vs buy decision with confidence?
Download the full Consumer Identity Management Guide for the Hospitality Industry and use it as your internal decision framework, engineering, security, CX, and leadership all in one room.
