Preventing and Detecting Human Trafficking in the Hotel Sector

Introduction

Hotels and motels have long served as focal points for sex trafficking. This is a problem both in the United States and internationally (Polaris, 2018a; Paraskevas, 2020). Trafficking in hotels includes labor trafficking where workers are paid sub-standard wages or work in slave-like conditions (Polaris, 2018a) but hotels/motels are also frequently abused by sex traffickers, according to a systematic analysis of human trafficking cases filed in federal courts in the United States. The research indicates that human trafficking occurs at all price and rating levels of the hospitality industry although many of the identified hotels/motels in the United States are in urban environments. The authors’ research with a larger data sample confirms initial findings from the state of Texas that the hotels most associated with human trafficking are close to highways and in disadvantaged neighborhoods of cities with diverse populations (Mletzko et.al, 2018).

Significant changes in the hospitality industry that have permitted greater anonymity and impersonal payment systems have facilitated the ability of human traffickers to use their facilities with impunity. The rise of technology and the ability to reserve hotels and pay for them without contact with employees of the hotel increases the possibility that traffickers can exploit larger, impersonal hotels without detection (van der Graaf & Lashley, 2020, pp. 60-61; Paraskevas, 2020, pp. 77-78). Although the impact of technology is great, our research also identified the fact that hotel personnel are often complicit in facilitating the sex trafficking. Reading legal cases of federal civil suits filed against hotel owners and chains since 2015 reveals that it is not just lower level personnel of the hotels/motels who are complicit in the trafficking but mid-level management as well as owners of smaller motels who may be facilitating the human trafficking (Ricchio v. McLean). Research done by the Human Trafficking Institute on federal human trafficking cases in 2020 reveals that only 4% of “case referrals” (reports of human trafficking to law enforcement) were provided by hotel personnel even though hotels were present in 77% of active federal sex trafficking cases in that year (Feehs & Currier Wheeler, 2021, pp. 54, 65).

The misuse of the facilities of the hospitality sector increases the necessity that corporate actors respond in a significant way to the abuse of their facilities (Peters, 2018; Fish, 2016). The presence of numerous legal suits in the US against many prominent hotel chains and franchisees represents a financial and reputational risk for these institutions. In recent years, partly in response to the legal activism of human trafficking survivors and their lawyers, many major hotel chains and industry leaders have adopted anti-trafficking policies and made public pronouncements that they are addressing the problem of human trafficking. Despite these professed intentions and the allocation of some financial and human resources, hotels were still the most common sex trafficking venue cited in active federal criminal cases in 2020 (Feehs & Currier Wheeler, 2021, 54). Hospitality and financial professionals analyzing the risks of human trafficking in the hotel sector point out that much more needs to be done than merely establishing guidelines and conducting training to ensure that there is a change in the existing situation (Polaris, 2018a; Sarkisian, 2015; Welty, 2020).