Your hotel or travel business does not just manage bookings. It collects, shares and stores guest travel data every day.

Yes. Hotels, resorts, homestays, travel agencies and tour operators collect and store large volumes of personal data — guest IDs, passport and visa copies, booking records, itineraries, payment details and foreign guest registers — which makes them Data Fiduciaries under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Obligations apply regardless of property size, and increase as you share data across OTAs, agents, transport vendors and corporate clients.

It is common, but passport copies and IDs arriving over WhatsApp or email are easy to forward and hard to delete consistently. Prefer a secure booking portal or upload link, avoid keeping duplicate copies on staff phones, restrict who can access them, and delete them once the stay or trip is complete.

Passport, visa and foreign guest / C-Form records are high-impact identity documents. Collect them only when required, store them in a system with access control rather than reception folders or inboxes, share only with the parties and authorities that genuinely need them, and set a clear retention and deletion rule instead of keeping them indefinitely.

Yes. Guest and traveller data shared with OTAs, transport vendors, tour guides, visa consultants, insurers, corporate clients and partner properties is a disclosure of personal data to third parties. Keep a simple vendor and sharing register, share only what each party needs for a defined purpose, and review access periodically.

The DPDPA expects data to be kept only as long as the purpose requires. Hotels and travel agencies often retain ID copies, booking records, travel documents and CCTV footage long after checkout. Define a retention period for each, archive or delete past it, document the purpose and access for CCTV and access logs, and offer guests a way to request deletion or correction.