Criminals regularly send fake booking confirmations, payment requests and “reservation problem” emails that look like they come from real hotels. If your domain is not protected, it is easy for them to send email that appears to come from your address. Email domain protection closes that gap. It also helps your genuine confirmations and invoices land in the inbox instead of the spam folder.

Why Email Domain Protection Matters for Hotels

Guests trust email from you. A spoofed message asking a guest to “confirm their card” can cost them money and cost you your reputation.
Your confirmations need to arrive. Major providers check whether email is properly authenticated. Gmail and Yahoo began requiring sender authentication in 2024, with stricter rules for high-volume senders.
Many systems send as your hotel. Your mailbox, PMS confirmations, booking engine, newsletters and website forms all send email using your domain. Each one has to be set up correctly.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC in Plain Language

Three standard DNS records work together to protect your domain:

SPF lists the services that are allowed to send email for your domain.
DKIM adds a digital signature to your email, proving it came from an authorized sender and was not changed along the way.
DMARC tells receiving mail servers what to do with email that fails those checks (deliver it, send it to spam or reject it) and sends you reports about who is sending email using your domain.

Together, they make it much harder for anyone else to send email that appears to come from your exact domain.

How We Set Up Email Domain Protection

Find every sender. We identify every service that sends email as your hotel, including ones nobody remembers setting up.
Fix SPF and DKIM. We create or correct the records for each legitimate sender, keeping SPF within its technical limits so it does not silently break.
Start DMARC in monitoring mode. Reports show what is passing and failing without blocking anything yet.
Tighten gradually. Once legitimate email is passing, we move DMARC to quarantine and then reject, so spoofed email is stopped without losing real confirmations.
Monitor. We keep watching the reports and update the records when you add or change a system, such as a new PMS or booking engine.

All we need is access to the place your domain’s DNS is managed. We do not need access to your mailboxes.

What Email Domain Protection Does Not Cover

It protects your exact domain. It cannot stop criminals from registering a lookalike domain with a small spelling change, and it does not replace staff awareness of phishing. We will tell you if we see lookalike domains in your reports. For more on the threats hotels face, read the cyber threats that actually target hotels.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will this stop our own email from being delivered?

Not if it is done in stages. Starting in monitoring mode lets us confirm every legitimate sender is set up before anything is blocked.

We use Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Is that enough?

Your mail provider handles part of the setup, but your PMS, booking engine and other systems that send as your domain also need to be included. That is where most hotels have gaps.

How long does it take?

The initial records can usually be set up quickly. Moving DMARC to full enforcement takes a few weeks of monitoring, so real email is never caught by mistake.

Protect Your Hotel’s Email Domain

AutoSecure has supported Ontario hotels since 2003. We can review your current SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup and show you exactly where the gaps are. Email protection is also covered in our broader hotel technology audit and our hotel cybersecurity services.

Book an email domain review or call 226-476-3358.