---
title: "Identifying guests in Sitecore Personalize"
slug: "identifying-guests-in-sitecore-personalize"
abstract: "Provides a definition of guests and the different guest types that Sitecore Personalize uses to categorize identified and anonymous site visitors."
---
# Identifying guests in Sitecore Personalize

A guest is any person that interacts with your brand, regardless of whether they are identified.

Sitecore Personalize stores attributes against the guest that you can use in personalization and decisioning. This behavioral data is sent to the platform through Sitecore Personalize APIs.

The guest data that is available to use in an experience, experiment or decisioning, depends on your organization's requirements and identity rules. Sitecore Personalize refers to the [process of identifying guests as identity resolution](https://doc.sitecore.com/personalize/en/users/sitecore-personalize/identifying-guests-in-sitecore-personalize/understanding-identity-resolution-in-sitecore-personalize.html "Understanding identity resolution in Sitecore Personalize").

Most organizations configure identity rules to [check for a matching unique identifier](https://doc.sitecore.com/personalize/en/users/sitecore-personalize/identifying-guests-in-sitecore-personalize/understanding-identity-resolution-in-sitecore-personalize/examples-of-identity-rules-using-unique-identifiers.html "Examples of identity rules using unique identifiers") that is internal to your organization, for example, a loyalty number or unique ID from a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) system. This could also be a browser reference or guest reference which is a unique identifier that Sitecore Personalize assigns the guest.

Some organizations [use Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to identify guests](https://doc.sitecore.com/personalize/en/users/sitecore-personalize/identifying-guests-in-sitecore-personalize/understanding-identity-resolution-in-sitecore-personalize/examples-of-identity-rules-using-personal-data.html "Examples of identity rules using personal data"). After Sitecore Personalize identifies a guest, it updates the **Guest Type** from **Visitor** to **Customer**.

The following describes the guest types:

- Customer

    A customer is a guest that has provided enough identity information according to your organization's identity rules.

- Visitor

    A visitor is a guest who has not provided enough identity information or has provided partial identity information but not enough to meet the organization's identity rules.

- Retired

    A retired guest is archived because it contained data that was migrated to another guest.

    > [!note]
    > Travel organizations use an additional guest type, Traveller. A **Traveller** guest type is a guest who is a consumer of a flight order but has not provided enough identifiable information, usually because they did not purchase the ticket. Only travel organizations use the **Traveller** guest type.