What travel agencies actually hold
Between passport copies for visa applications, payment card details, and detailed travel history, a travel agency's customer data is meaningfully more sensitive than many other small businesses handle — and it's often scattered across the least secure places: personal WhatsApp, shared email inboxes, unencrypted spreadsheets.
Why this is both a compliance and trust issue
Beyond any specific regulatory requirement, customers who hand over a passport copy or payment details are trusting an agency to handle it responsibly — a data exposure incident (even a minor one) damages that trust in a way that's hard to repair, regardless of the legal consequences.
What better practice looks like
Sensitive data should live in access-controlled systems, not personal devices or shared inboxes — with role-based permissions ensuring only staff who genuinely need to see a passport copy or payment detail can access it.
How Muhasib supports this
Muhasib centralises customer documents within an access-controlled system with role-based permissions, rather than leaving sensitive data scattered across personal devices and inboxes.