Trouble-free travel depends on data protection

Your customers book a flight, breeze through the e-gate, connect to airport Wi-Fi, check into their hotel and, once at their destination, sip a drink by the pool while sharing holiday photos with friends and family.

 

Travel today is a carefully orchestrated digital experience, with most of the friction removed. What most people never see is the security infrastructure working behind the scenes to make that convenience possible.

 

Whether it’s keeping online booking systems safe from bots, verifying identity at borders or ensuring digital footprints are secure, digital trust is as important as passports and luggage – and holidays may involve more security checks than you or your customers realise.

 

Robots compete for hotel rooms

Airlines, hotels and travel platforms face enormous volumes of automated traffic or bots every day. Some of it is helpful, such as search engine crawlers and service integrations. Much of it is not.

 

Bots accounted for 53% of all web traffic in 2025, according to the 2026 Thales Bad Bot Report, with the biggest share being bad bots (40% of total traffic).

 

Most customers never see the attacks, but they certainly experience the symptoms: a booking site takes forever to load, prices shoot up from an hour ago and the number of available seats drops.

 

The 2026 Thales Digital Trust Index found 68% of people had abandoned or switched away from a company online because of issues with its website or app.

 

Automated tools may be scraping prices, testing stolen credentials, monitoring inventory or trying to make fraudulent bookings.

 

It’s no surprise that attackers eye travel companies. They combine high transaction volumes with time-sensitive purchasing decisions. Nobody wants to waste time on a glitchy booking platform when trying to get their hands on that last available seat or an in-demand tour or attraction.

 

Application security and bot protection help separate genuine travellers from automated abusers. Their job is to block malicious traffic and ensure genuine holidaymakers can access services.

 

When these systems work well, nobody notices them. 

 

Automated passport checks

 

Few travel experiences have changed more over the years than airport border control. 

 

Endless queues, manual passport inspections and repeated document checks are being replaced by automated e-gates. 

 

Electronic passports have a secure chip holding digital identity information protected by cryptographic certificates. When travellers present their passport at an e-gate, the system verifies the document is genuine and that the traveller matches the biometric information.

 

It is an example of identity verification infrastructure operating at scale. 

 

Millions of people pass through airports each day. Most only think about this technology when something goes wrong. It is revealing how rarely it does. 

 

Room keys moved to the cloud

 

The hotel key has also changed. Today, even a plastic card may no longer the norm. Guests can check in through an app, get a digital door key on their phone and head to their accommodation without visiting reception.

 

Convenient? Absolutely. Simple? Not necessarily. When hotel services go digital, guest information moves across a much larger technological landscape. 

 

Booking details, payment information, loyalty programme data, room access credentials and ‘stay’ history are stored, transmitted and shared across multiple systems. 

 

Third-party booking platforms and resellers add further complexity, accessing and generating inventory and customer data of their own.

 

Protecting that information is vital. The 2026 Thales Data Threat Report found only 34% of organisations have complete knowledge of where their data is stored – important because visibility is the starting point for security. 

 

You cannot effectively protect data if you do not fully understand where it resides. 

 

Many technologies allow convenience and security to coexist. Encryption, access controls, authentication and strong data governance help ensure guest information remains protected as it moves between cloud platforms, mobile apps and third-party services. 

 

That means hospitality providers can offer the convenience of digital check-in and mobile door keys while giving guests confidence that their personal information is being handled securely.

 

The Wi-Fi passwords everyone knows

 

Holiday routines see us relax. Holidaymakers connect to public Wi-Fi networks, access banking apps from unfamiliar locations, sync their digital wallets, share photos and update their location on social media. 

 

These are all normal parts of travel, but they generate a surprising amount of data. 

 

Every connected service relies on information about identities, locations, devices, transactions and behaviours. All that data needs protection.

 

The challenge goes beyond securing a hotel network or airport hotspot. Information must be protected as it moves between devices, applications, cloud platforms and service providers. 

 

Before those holiday snaps appear on social media, countless systems for authentication, authorisation and data protection will have done their jobs. 

 

The best security is rarely noticed by customers, but it’s what makes every digital interaction possible.

 

Chris Harris, is EMEA technical director for data and application security at aerospace and defence multinational Thales