Checking your ID before your first booking

Once, before your first booking

While identity checks are switched on, every guest checks their ID once, before their first booking anywhere on Kabora. After that you never do it again, at any host.

You are not asked to sign up, to look around, to message a host, or to join a trip somebody else booked. Only the person booking does it; the people travelling with them do not.

When checks are switched off

Kabora can switch identity checks off. While they are off, nobody is asked, the "Verify your identity" link is not on your account page, and nothing about it shows on a listing. A check that was already running when the switch went off still has its verdict recorded.

What it looks like when it is on

• Every listing says so above the booking button, before you have filled anything in: *Kabora checks every guest's ID once.* If you have already done it, you see nothing, because a rule you already meet is just noise.
• If you try to book anyway, the booking is refused and tells you where to start the check. Your dates are still there when you come back.
• Hosts can tick Only verified guests can book on a listing too. While every guest is checked it changes nothing, and it is the rule that stands if the check itself cannot run.

What the check involves

You photograph a government ID — a passport, driving licence or national ID card — and take a short selfie. Software checks the document is genuine and that the face matches. It takes about two minutes.

Who would see your photos

Not Kabora. The consent screen names the company that runs the check — Didit, an identity-verification company, under a data-processing agreement — and sets out the rest: your ID photos and your selfie go to Didit, Kabora never receives or stores them, and what stays on your account is only the outcome, verified or not, and when. How long the photos live after that is Didit's retention schedule, not Kabora's. The outcome is deleted with your account.

Starting it

From Account settings → Identity verification. A consent screen sets those facts out, and you agree by pressing I agree — start verification.

Listing a place of your own asks the same once: while checks are on, you can set up a listing in full before you verify, and it waits as a draft; it goes live, or can be booked by its link, once you have verified. Importing from Hospitable works the same way: every place arrives as a draft. One Kabora account books stays and runs properties, so one check covers both. Changing the name on your account means checking again.

A different thing with a similar name

A host can also mark a booking request as needing ID. That is them asking you a question, not this check, and it works whether the switch is on or off. Your trip page then reads "Your host needs to check who you are", and the request sits there until the host says they are satisfied. Paying does not move it: if you pay while this is outstanding, the money is real, and the stay stays exactly where the host left it.

Kabora sends you nothing when this happens — no email, no message, no prompt on the page telling you what to send. The host asks in your message thread, and that is where you answer. So if that heading appears and your thread is empty, ask the host what they need to see. Nothing on Kabora's side is going to ask you for it.