What is a verified guest on NUM?

A verified guest is a traveler whose identity has been confirmed as a unique real person before they can request or book anything. One account is one human — no bots, no duplicate accounts, no scraped or purchased leads. Every booking request a business receives through NUM was made by a verified individual.

How does NUM verify a business listing?

By proof of control, not paperwork. NUM sends a one-time code to the phone number or website-domain email already published on the listing — never to contact details the claimant types in. Only someone with access to the business's own published contact can complete the claim. Free-mail addresses can't be used, and contested claims go to human review with the current owner notified.

Does guest verification reduce no-shows?

Anonymous booking forms make no-shows and fake reservations cheap. Attaching a verified real identity to every request changes who bothers to make one. NUM is early and does not publish no-show statistics it doesn't have — the mechanism is the claim, not an invented percentage.

What happens if someone tries to claim my business?

They can't complete a claim without access to the contact details already published on your listing. If your listing is already claimed and someone contests it, the claim goes to NUM's team for manual review and you are notified — a listing is never transferred on a code alone.

Verification, precisely

What “verified” means on NUM — for guests, and for your business.

Q: Does NUM verify places it lists?

No — and NUM says so deliberately. The directory maps 2.5 million places across 77 destinations, and an unclaimed listing is never described as verified. Verification is reserved for two things only: guest identity, and owner control of a claimed listing.

Most platforms use “verified” as decoration. We use it as a specification. This page is the specification — what we verify, how, and what we deliberately refuse to call verified.

What is a verified guest?

A verified guest is a traveler whose identity has been confirmed as a unique real person before they can request or book anything. One account is one human. Not a bot, not a duplicate account, not a name from a scraped or purchased lead list.

That is the entire claim, and it is the strongest one we make. When a booking request reaches your WhatsApp, a verified individual made it — someone with an identity attached to their word.

Why it matters to you: anonymous booking forms make no-shows and fakes cheap. Attaching a real identity to every request changes who bothers to make one. We won’t dress that up with a percentage we don’t have — the mechanism is the claim.

How is a business listing verified?

By proof of control, not paperwork. When you claim your listing:

You find your business in our directory — 2.5 million places mapped across 77 destinations, so it’s almost certainly there.
We send a one-time code to the phone number or website-domain email already published on your listing. Never to a number or address you type in — that’s exactly what makes it proof.
You enter the code. Claim verified, listing yours, done — about two minutes.

Free-mail addresses (gmail, hotmail, etc.) can’t be used for domain verification, and if the contact on your listing is unreachable, you can submit proof for human review instead — usually decided within a day.

If someone tries to claim your business: they can’t — not without access to your own published contact. And if a claimed listing is contested, it goes to our team, the current owner is notified, and a listing is never transferred on a code alone.

What NUM does not verify — on purpose.

An unclaimed listing is never described as “verified.” We map millions of places; mapping is not endorsing. Of the 2.5 million places in the directory, only claimed listings carry owner verification, and ratings exist only where they’re real. We’d rather tell you that plainly than borrow trust we haven’t earned — the same honesty applies to how we describe you to travelers.

Thing	Verified?	What it means
A guest	Yes — always	Identity-confirmed unique human, before they can book
Your claimed listing	Yes — by you	Control proven via your own published contact
An unclaimed place	No	Mapped, not endorsed. We say which is which
Ratings	Only where real	Shown only where genuinely collected — never invented

Claim yours before someone asks why you haven’t.

Free, about two minutes, and the code comes to a contact only you control.

Claim your listing — free