Moving Human Trafficking Awareness Beyond the Travel Industry's Front Lines

At a Tacoma, Wash., hotel, a housekeeper standing in a hallway saw a man turn back into a hotel room and tell an unseen person: Keep the blinds closed; should anyone come to the door, do not answer; and if anyone calls, do not answer. He said he'd return at 2 to bring food.

The employee thought the situation was strange and told the hotel manager, who then talked to other employees about what they had seen or noticed about that room and guests. Management decided to send someone to the door saying they were maintenance and needed to fix the air conditioning. When a young woman answered, they asked if she was OK or if she needed help. She replied she needed help. Management called police, and the man, who was already a person of interest to authorities, was detained. The young woman returned to her family.

Mar Brettmann—executive director of the Seattle-based Businesses Ending Slavery & Trafficking, which provides training on human trafficking awareness to hotels—shared that story with BTN. The general manager of the hotel contacted her about it because it happened after the property had provided BEST training to its employees.

"In the hotel industry, we're continuing to get the word out and train as many people as we can," Brettmann said. "We're working through state associations and hotel associations, but we also work with brands. We're training more people so we can see more victims identified."

BEST is one of the partners in the American Hotel & Lodging Association's No Room for Trafficking campaign, which launched at the end of June and aims to train every U.S. hotel worker how to spot human trafficking. Additional partners include ECPAT-USA—formerly End Child Prostitution and Trafficking, which also provides awareness training to many in the hospitality industry—and Polaris, which runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Human Trafficking & the Travel Industry

The travel industry is, unfortunately, a key component in human trafficking. Airlines transport victims and hotels provide places not only for potential sexual exploitation but also for forced labor. Research bears out those facts. A 2014 report from the International Labour Organization estimated the annual profits from human trafficking at $150 billion; $99 billion coming from commercial sexual exploitation. A 2017 ILO report estimated 24.9 million people at the time were victims of human trafficking globally. Of those, 64 percent were exploited for labor and 19 percent were sexually exploited; sexual exploitation, however, earns 66 percent of global human trafficking profits. Of that 24.9 million, 71 percent are women and girls and 25 percent are under the age of 18. A 2014 Urban Institute report showed that 71 percent of the labor trafficking victims it surveyed arrived in the U.S. via airplane before being trafficked. A 2018 Polaris report showed 75 percent of victims surveyed reported using hotels at some point during their trafficking.

Combatting human trafficking is not a new initiative for the hospitality industry. It began actively addressing the issue at least 15 years ago, when in 2004 Carlson Cos., then the owner of Radisson Hotels and other brands, signed the Tourism Child-Protection Code of Conduct. Known as The Code, it's a voluntary set of business principles hospitality companies can implement to prevent sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. The Code is a joint venture between the tourism private sector and ECPAT-USA, which is a member of ECPAT International, a network of organizations in 95 countries.

Signatories pay annual fees based on their revenues each year and agree to six principles that include establishing policies and procedures against the sexual exploitation of children, providing a clause in contracts requiring a zero-tolerance policy throughout the signatories' supply chains, training employees on signs of trafficking and reporting annually on implementation of Code-related activities. In recent years, more hospitality companies have signed on, and as of press time, there were at least 64 members in the U.S. In addition to Carlson, whose main division is now CWT, that includes several major companies connect to the business travel industry: Sabre, BCD Travel, Maritz Global Events, Accor, Choice Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Hyatt, Marriott International, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, American Airlines and Delta Airlines.

"There was a time where there were very few partners, and people didn't want to believe that this could happen at their property, brand, company," said ECPAT-USA director of private sector engagement Michelle Guelbart. "The last five years, there's been a huge push, [especially] with hotel chains. We are getting [training] down to the front lines and getting every brand, every property [involved] so there is no place that a trafficker goes that feels they can run this kind of business anonymously or risk free."

Suppliers increasingly have mandated human trafficking-awareness training programs for their frontline staff like airport gate agents, flight attendants, hotel front desk employees and housekeepers. Others aim to train every employee. Marriott is one of the latter. As of May, the company has trained more than 600,000 of its global count of 730,000 hotel workers at managed and franchised properties. Mandated awareness training began in January 2017, said Marriott human rights director Tu Rinsche.

Why the recent industry interest? For airlines, the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 required air carriers to provide initial and annual flight attendant training on how to recognize and respond to potential human trafficking victims. When reauthorized in October 2018, the law was expanded to include ticket counter agents, gate agents and other air carrier workers whose jobs require regular interaction with passengers.

Some airlines, like Delta, which has donated $1 million to help fund the National Human Trafficking Hotline, were on board with awareness training even before the law was passed. The Blue Lightning Initiative—led by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection as part of the DHS Blue Campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking—launched in 2012 and has trained more than 100,000 personnel in the aviation industry. United Airlines partnered with the Blue Campaign in 2018 to train pilots and customer-facing staff. The company had trained its flight attendants in 2017.

For hotels, the shift toward training and awareness is driven partially by corporate social responsibility initiatives—it's the right thing to do—but also by legislative policy. Cities and states have begun to pass laws that require lodging facilities to display signage calling attention to the problem or that mandate employee training on human trafficking indicators. Others, while not requiring training, have made training available on public agency websites. ECPAT-USA in May released Unpacking Human Trafficking, a survey of the laws by state.

In addition, some victims who were trafficked in hotels have filed lawsuits against hotel owners and operators, alleging that the defendants were in a position to notice the signs of trafficking and failed to report it to the authorities. "Look at the laws coming out in different cities that are slapping fines on the hotels when someone is being rescued, when they say the hotel knew [they were] being enslaved there," said Jennifer Keltner, a former travel and meetings manager who is the founder of Rescue Party Give, a nonprofit that raises money to fight human trafficking. "Now is when you will get these hotels to finally address it."

Traction with Travel & Meetings Professionals

Regardless of the impetus, most people agree that human trafficking in travel is an important issue and something should be done. In June, BTN surveyed 185 travel buyers in its Research Council about human trafficking in the industry. Eleven percent wanted to take the survey but didn't know enough about the issue. Of the remaining 164 travel buyers, 72 percent were aware of the issue, mostly through efforts by the Global Business Travel Association and the Association for Corporate Travel Executives. Forty percent of the 164 have received education or training on the issue, while 6 percent said they had witnessed or were told about a potential human trafficking incident that occurred on a business trip.

BTN talked to more than a dozen buyers about the topic. They unanimously agreed that, as corporate travel managers, they wanted to learn more and do more about the issue. They now have that opportunity, as ECPAT-USA in January released a training module geared to travel and events professionals. It takes about 20 minutes to complete and covers human trafficking in the travel industry, signs to look for and what corporate travel and meetings professionals can do to get suppliers to address human trafficking in contracts. Sample corporate anti-trafficking policies, questions to include in RFPs about suppliers' commitments to fighting trafficking and contract clauses are also available on the ECPAT-USA website. "We find corporate travel managers can be very influential with their buying power," Guelbart said. "We created [the video] with the industry and put together a committee of travel professionals to vet the material."

When told about the video and RFP and contract language, all the buyers BTN talked with said they would be interested in taking the training and many would start to incorporate questions about suppliers' commitments to fighting human trafficking and would consider adding language on it to contracts. Nearly all said they would either use resources already available to raise awareness with fellow employees, such as through a corporate newsletter, luncheons or in-house workshops and that they'd be willing to approach senior management about getting their departments and travelers trained.

Some already have started down that path. One buyer from the insurance industry was creating language for contracts that required suppliers to have and adhere to a code of conduct and to have procedures in place to raise awareness on human trafficking. But it has not been approved yet.

Encore Travel, based in Montreal, runs the RFP process for several clients, and the travel management company includes questions about the issue, including whether suppliers provide human trafficking training to employees, said Taylor Travel Consulting's Mary Taylor, who is contracted to Encore. "I was a travel buyer for 19 years, and I help them format the questions for their clients. We want to know if they train their staff on human trafficking and how often do they do that."

While a supplier that does not provide training might still be selected as a preferred partner, the RFP responses are weighted "and the safety section gets a very strong weighting because it's important for Encore representing corporate clients that they present a good product for their travelers."

Some suppliers welcome anti-human trafficking requirements in their contracts. "We would be more than happy if corporate travel managers required it," said American Airlines SVP of global sales and distribution Alison Taylor. "ECPAT was great to put the language and video out."

Hilton director of corporate responsibility and human rights Caroline Meledo added, "The power is in the hands of the RFP, especially corporate clients that organize in the [meetings, incentives, conferences and exhbitions] sector. They should ask if the hotel trains team members on signs of sex trafficking and expand questions across the value chain, ask whether companies have a human rights policy."

A few buyers, though, were leery about adding anti-trafficking language into RFPs and contracts. "I wouldn't want to say, ‘I'll take this hotel because they said yes [that they raise human trafficking awareness with their employees] and not the other hotel because they said no," said one buyer. "How do you prove it?" Another buyer was more concerned about practicing what you preach. "If we as a corporation don't do the things we're requiring of our contractors—be it car, air, hotel or a travel management company—who's to say they should be doing it," she said.

Indeed, the issue can be a hard one to breach. "It's a very touchy subject," Keltner said. A buyer with a manufacturing company agreed. She had brought it up to HR at her former employer and was turned away because "sex slavery is a hard sell." The buyer added, "But it's probably an easier proposition today because there is more awareness." She also got pushback from some of her male colleagues. One said that when he was in Thailand on business, he went to a "bunny farm" [a brothel] even though he knew what was going on there.

The unspoken element is that human trafficking is all around us, not just halfway around the world. Both sex trafficking and labor trafficking occur in all 50 states. For sex trafficking, research has found that the demand comes from "our workers and neighbors," BEST's Brettmann said. "They are disproportionately white, well-educated, have more money than the norm and work in companies."

This is where awareness training remains vital. Multiple buyers who had received education on human trafficking said they were "stunned" and "overwhelmed" to find that it happened as much as it did in the U.S., and not just at lower-end hotels and motels, but also at four- and five-star properties. Several sources, both buyers and suppliers, mentioned specific locations in the U.S. where they knew trafficking situations or arrests had occurred. These included New Orleans; Pittsburgh; Sacramento; Omaha; Warren, Mich.; San Antonio; Tacoma; Atlanta; Houston, where nine sex traffickers were arrested during 2017's Super Bowl LI; and Minneapolis, host of Super Bowl LII, during which 727 calls were made to the sex trafficking hotline, according to the Women's Foundation of Minnesota.

"The first step should be to educate people on what is going on, the vastness and severity of it," said the manufacturing company buyer. "There are children being trafficked. These aren't women making a choice. It's slavery."

A few buyers would be more willing to ask management to implement a training program for onboarding travelers if there was some ROI around the programs companies are already running so they could use that as leverage. "What works and what doesn't work?" said one of the buyers who was concerned about putting language into contracts. "Is it just the video. Is it just posting online and putting comments at the bottom of an itinerary? Does in-depth training work?"

Return on Investment

The University of Washington evaluated BEST's hotel training and found that trained employees were more likely to report potential instances of human trafficking to their managers. It also found that 96 percent of training participants believe training made their hotels safer. But that's the only assessment BTN could locate.

BTN tried to find out how suppliers that offer human trafficking-awareness training measure the effectiveness of their programs, perhaps an increase in calls identifying potential trafficking instances since the training started. Some suppliers have no measurements in place. Others count the employees trained, and others collect statistics but they were proprietary. BTN also asked for recent examples of trained employees calling out potential instances of trafficking, a sign that training is paying off, but suppliers provided only examples that already had been made public.

"We don't have numbers, but over the past year, there's no question that particularly flight attendant crews have learned from the training and are recognizing signs more than they were two years ago," acknowledged Delta SVP of in-flight service Allison Ausband. She also heads up the carrier's anti-human trafficking campaign. American Airlines' Taylor said the carrier can see that the training has escalated the number of instances reported each year, "which is a good thing. This is a global initiative, and we've had instances well beyond just North America."

Most suppliers, however, pointed to figures from nonprofits combatting human trafficking. While Polaris data does not measure the effectiveness of specific suppliers' training programs directly, it does show that when many travel companies began to increase their awareness training and commitment to fighting human trafficking from 2012 to 2017, the number of calls to its hotline increased from 13,396 a year to 26,557. The annual number of trafficking cases reported rose from 3,272 in 2012 to 8,524 in 2017. From the hotline's launch in December 2007 to December 2017, Polaris recorded 3,596 cases that involved a hotel or motel. For the first half of 2018, the five states with the most reported cases were California, with 760; Texas, with 455; Florida, with 367; Ohio, with 219; and New York, with 206.

While the vast majority of lodging-related cases involved sex trafficking, the 2018 Polaris report On-Ramps, Intersections, and Exit Routes: A Roadmap for Systems and Industries to Prevent and Disrupt Human Trafficking, shows that hotels and motels are also home to labor trafficking. The hotline identified 482 potential labor trafficking victims in this sector from January 2015 through December 2017. The highest concentrations of potential victims were from Jamaica, with 100; the Philippines, with 80; and India, with 34.

Hilton, which signed The Code in 2011, recognizes that human trafficking goes beyond sexual exploitation and combats the issue in three areas. "In each bucket, we have a different relationship to modern slavery."

For hotel operations, Hilton mandates awareness training for staff in managed operations. For the construction of new hotels, the company has been analyzing human rights assessments for each new country it is considering entering since the second half of 2018. Based on those assessments, it has development mitigation plans to make sure the projects live up to Hilton's code of conduct. For its supply chain, Hilton makes sure its supply chain is free of forced labor.

This last action is one that many corporations are addressing because of laws. The U.K. Modern Slavery Act of 2015 requires companies subject to the act to publish an anti-slavery statement and to ensure that modern slavery offenses are not taking place in their business or in their supply chains. The U.S. Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, an update to the Tariff Act of 1930, prohibits all products made by forced labor from being imported into the U.S.

Nearly all suppliers BTN interviewed had code of conduct policies in place to address forced labor. They also see clients ask about it and require adherence to codes of conduct in contracts, as these laws and others now hold those clients accountable for their supply chain partners.

Suppliers' New Anti-Human Trafficking Efforts

The three mega TMCs—CWT, BCD Travel and American Express Global Business Travel—all have anti-human trafficking policies and training in place. They also have been involved in fundraising events and support nonprofits fighting the issue locally and globally.

CWT and the Carlson Family Foundation have donated more than $1 million toward fighting human trafficking, are active on this issue. CWT launched its global anti-human trafficking task force in 2017, and it has used both BEST and ECPAT training videos for its employees. To raise awareness about the issue, "last year, the taskforce put ads on clients' digital platforms," said CWT chief legal counsel Lauren Aste. "We had 125,000 impressions in 2018 and expect about 50,000 a month in 2019. Those are seen by the traveler, and the number of impressions is increasing." Parent company Carlson partnered with Clear Channel and local organizations for Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis to help train law enforcement on what to look for. It also designed a training package for large sporting events, identifying what should be done to minimize instances of human trafficking and identifying people who take advantage of it. "Large sporting events absolutely are areas of risk," Aste said. "There were arrests made [at the Super Bowl], and it was an eye-opener when you think about it."

BCD is creating an updated training video, Don't Look Away, that will be a part of employee onboarding and part of the company's annual refresher courses for employees. For the past few years, the company has had in its learning library a training video for travelers—created by Sabre's anti-human trafficking program, Passport to Freedom—on the signs of human trafficking. Last year, BCD EVP of global program management Kathy Jackson sent a letter to BCD's own top 100 travelers, encouraging them to take the training. "That was followed up with a letter from CEO John Snyder," she said. "We're now working with program managers to help raise awareness with their customers and encourage travel managers to also educate their top travelers."

Amex GBT plans to introduce mandatory responsible-business training, which will include a module on human trafficking, said EMEA VP of risk and compliance Michelle Dyer. "We will start rolling it out with the meeting and events team in late quarter three or early quarter four. Then we'll broaden it to the business traveler care team."

In March 2017, Delta began to allow SkyMiles loyalty program members to donate miles through SkyWish to transport trafficking survivors. Customers have donated 1.7 million miles, and Delta has matched with 6 million miles; that has resulted in 66 flights for survivors "to either get them returned home to their families or to help them navigate through different legal battles they face," Ausband said. Last year, the carrier began offering apprenticeships to survivors through Wellspring Living. Four apprenticeships have occurred, and Delta has hired one of those people full time, Ausband said. And this year, the company added a public service video on its planes as part of Get On Board, a program to fight human trafficking. "We deliberated over it for a long time. We didn't want to create fear, but we felt it was the right thing to do."

Marriott also released a public service announcement video on YouTube this year showcasing examples from associates who identified potential human trafficking situations, as well as testimonials from survivors, Rinsche said. The company will launch posters this summer in employee areas to reinforce the content training taken already and in some public-facing areas. As for assisting survivors, the company has partnered with the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery to create an employability curriculum that introduces survivors to hospitality pathways to jobs in the industry. "We are trying to take a thoughtful approach to how we engage along the survivor journey," Rinsche said. "We are not victim assistance. We will leave that to service providers, but we can identify resources and tools we can adapt for this audience for service providers to provide better service to their clients."

InterContinental Hotels Group Americas CEO Elie Maalouf announced at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in June that the company was creating an anti-human trafficking program. A spokesperson for the company said some training would roll out this summer, but additional details are not yet available. IHG will work with AHLA on its efforts. 

What Else Can the Industry Do?

ECPAT started with suppliers, is now partnering with travel and event managers, and next wants to engage with business travelers, Guelbart said. It also wants more non-travel companies to sign The Code.

American's Taylor agreed, adding that corporate travel managers also should have their companies sign on. "We have worked with larger corporate accounts who have signed The Code, and they realize it helps them and informs their travelers to look for [signs of human trafficking] when on the road," she said. "That's why we get people calling us from the gates and airport when something doesn't look right. It's often from corporate accounts who have done that training internally."

ECPAT's Guelbart also said the organization wants to see more companies work together and share best practices. The World Tourism & Travel Council leads the way, having launched its anti-human trafficking task force in April. It provides a forum for travel and tourism companies to share best practices. It's looking to fight the issue through four pillars: prevention through more awareness, protection through awareness training, action through encouragement of governments to enact anti-trafficking legislation, and support through assistance and training to survivors. Founding members include Airbnb, Amex GBT, the Bicester Village Shopping Collection, Ctrip, CWT, Emirates, Expedia Group, Hilton, JTB Corp., the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Marriott, Silversea, Thomas Cook and TUI.

Additional companies are involved in getting anti-trafficking legislation passed. "We've had many employees go to the Hill to lobby in support of certain bills," Delta's Ausband said. "We had 150 employees work to get congressmen and congresswomen on board [with anti-human trafficking legislation]."

Global distribution operator Sabre, which has been fighting human trafficking since signing The Code in 2011, also advocates "to make sure laws are put in place to ensure criminals are put behind bars and stopped and that those who are victims are not seen as criminals but seen as victims," said Sabre Passport to Freedom program head Michael Hanson.

Hilton's Meledo, referring to the MICE industry, wants companies to stop buying swag made by child labor somewhere else in the world. "We spend a lot of money on takeaways, on gifts, but don't think about why they are relatively inexpensive," she said. One prong of the company's Meet With Purpose program is to support To the Market, which sells items made by social entrepreneurs that work with vulnerable populations across the world, including trafficking survivors.

As of press time, several hospitality organizations were taking part in events planned for the United Nations' World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, on July 30. And AHLA and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association will host regional events throughout the year leading up to Human Trafficking Prevention Month in January.

Little by little, the industry seems to be making a difference. "I'm certain every big hotel chain and airline has a story [about spotting potential human trafficking]," said the travel buyer whose efforts to bring awareness of the issue at her former employer failed. "They may be few and far between, but if you save one person, it's worth it."

The key is to know how to spot a potential situation and what to do. "Reach out to authorities, and don't be embarrassed or afraid to be wrong," consultant Mary Taylor said. "It's better to be wrong than to not say anything at all."