You can really lose yourself when staying overnight on business, but it is unlikely that you can get away from the multitude of fellow overnighters.
Travelling for business or work seems to me to be on the increase. Bellinda Kontominas, writing in this paper on October 13, profiled several people who did this to avoid horrific property prices and she cited statistics indicating, for instance, that 3475 people on census night were in Sydney on business but resident in Queensland. Your correspondent regularly travels between our capital cities, and usually for several days at a time.
I first realised the possibilities of losing myself on a recent interstate trip. I arrived tired after extracting myself with a pair of warm spoons from the suit-besieged cabin of our national carrier's 5pm flight. Having "dined" on a repast designed by a hunger striker consisting of several olives, three hard biscuits and a post-modern reinterpretation of Spam, I was looking forward to dispensing with the check-in civilities faster than a broken election promise.
Having stayed at these premises with the regularity of a Swiss clock on a diet of laxatives, imagine my surprise when on this occasion, the ritual was altered to resemble a Cold War border crossing into East Berlin. I was assailed with a demand to produce a driver's licence – a new one on me. Meekly obliging, I drew the line when I spotted an assistant making off with my licence to "photocopy it for our records".
Not on your nelly! Come hither without delay and kindly dispossess yourself of my licence before risking the theft of my identity by storing my photograph, address, licence number and credit card number all in one place, I found myself saying. The obliging establishment acceded to my request, but pointed to the booking regulations of the online booking service I had used (and had used for years). There it was: we ask hotels to keep a record of drivers' licences in the event of a dispute over credit card charges.
When I inquired who had access to my details, how were they stored, for how long, what guarantees and checks were in place to ensure these details were not accessed by hackers or unauthorised staff to sell to the highest bidder, all I got back from the booking company was a bland assurance that they had the highest standards in place.
Given the booking company is a separate entity to the hotel, quite how they police and maintain these standards is beyond me. Further, credit usage disputes are a matter for credit card companies and not booking companies. Other online booking companies, I discovered, had no obvious similar regulations. When I use my credit card in other places, such as department stores, the Apple store and so forth I am not asked to show my licence, let alone allow people to make copies with no clear rationale or reassurance about the security of the information.
This is a totally unacceptable imposition on travellers and exposes them to potential identity fraud. Think very carefully before handing over your driver's licence, especially if you are providing other sensitive information such as credit card details. You really can lose yourself when staying overnight on business.
Jim Bright is Professor of Career Education and Development at ACU and a partner at Bright and Associates. Email opinion@jimbright.com.
