The Role of the Hospitality Industry in Preventing Human Trafficking

Introduction

This chapter examines the role of the hospitality industry in the prevention of, and intervention in, human trafficking. While the focus of the chapter is on sex trafficking, many of the preventive actions and interventions will work with labor trafficking, as well. The objectives of the chapter are to:

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  Introduce the reader to the elements of prevention and intervention as developed in crime prevention and public health approaches to forms of victimization;

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  Uncover efforts to prevent human trafficking in the hospitality industry within the prevention and intervention formats; and,

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  Explore the leveraging of technology that is currently available and under development in the hospitality industry to prevent and/or intervene in the human trafficking problem.

Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, and the sexual or labor exploitation of vulnerable persons by force, fraud, or coercion (Airoldi, 2019; Bonilla & Mo, 2019; Feingold, 2005;). This violation of human rights impacts most countries, despite the introduction of legislation to criminalize it at international, national, and state/provincial levels (Kragt, 2020; Laczko & Gramegna, 2003; Logan et al., 2009). Human trafficking is generally categorized under labor trafficking (Bracy et al., 2021; Zhang, 2012) and sex trafficking (Raymond et al., 2001; Schauer & Wheaton, 2006), though the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling (UNODC, 2017) also includes domestic servitude and organ harvesting as forms of human trafficking. In these occurrences, victims may be subjected to brutal force, psychological and financial coercion, or other forms of abuse in order to render them disposed to sexual or labor manipulation.

The hospitality industry, consisting of hotels, restaurants, and other similar traveler service sectors, is cited often as a location where forms of human trafficking occur, especially sex trafficking. For example, in 2018, the Polaris Project reported that 72% of complaints received via their hotline involved sex trafficking in hotels or hospitality-related venues, for example restaurants and spas (Polaris, 2018). The hospitality industry is especially vulnerable to human trafficking crimes (Paraskevas & Brookes, 2018), given the particular characteristics of the industry such as transient customers, secluded guestrooms, a service culture of respecting guests’ privacy, and others (Robinson, 2013). Indeed, hotels are arguably the ideal environment for traffickers (Paraskevas & Brookes, 2018) because hotels allow traffickers to fly under the radar, to remain anonymous, and to change locations frequently. According to Polaris (2018) statistics, hotels/motels were the top venue for sex trafficking complaints in Florida (where the authors reside). This has resulted in multiple attempts to legislate responsibility for “facilitating” human trafficking, which have met mixed outcomes in legislatures. Additionally, several hotels and chains have been the target of lawsuits initiated by victims for allowing exploitation activities to occur at their properties (Cohen, 2020). Such legal action results in both reputational damage and high fines.