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Human trafficking, also considered modern day slavery, consists of traffickers who seek to profit from the exploitation of innocents with manipulative and deceptive tactics. According to The National Human Trafficking Hotline’s statistics, hotels are the top 4th location amongst possible sex trafficking venues. In 2019, there were 11,500 human trafficking cases reported with 48,326 contacts to the Hotline. Calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline have increased 93% year-over-year due to the pandemic. Sadly, many cases of human trafficking go unreported each year. Thankfully, there is free training which provides hotel employees with the skills to help catch traffickers and save victims from further abuse.

Released by the AHLA and AHLA Foundation in early 2020, “No Room for Trafficking” is a free awareness program which supports the industry’s longstanding commitment to combatting human trafficking. On August 2, 2021, it was announced at the AHLA “World Day Against Trafficking in Persons” by AHLA President & CEO Chip Rogers and ECPAT-USA CEO Lori Cohen that over 500,000 hotel workers have been trained through the free awareness program put out by the AHLA. Marriott, who implemented their own training program in 2020 entitled: “Your Role In Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs” has trained nearly 100,000 of their own hotel employees to date.  Combining the AHLA numbers with Marriott makes for a total of nearly 600,000 hotel staff who have completed human trafficking awareness training. 

The importance of this training cannot be overstated for hotel staff. At the recent “World Day Against Trafficking in Persons”, Chip Rogers relayed a compelling story of a 23-year-old mother who had been kidnapped by traffickers and was taken to the Los Angeles Airport Marriott hotel to be trafficked. Because of the awareness training hotel staff had received, the mother along with nine other women were rescued and three traffickers were arrested for their crimes. Rogers said, “The staff at this hotel had all completed the training and were therefore well-equipped to know what steps to follow”. 

Lori Cohen, who had previously represented victims of human trafficking in her time as a lawyer, said that victims would often ask, “Why did no one say anything?” She said that the answer was, “Because hotel staff didn’t know what to do. They didn’t have any tools. This training demystifies trafficking and gives them the tools they need to be able to react appropriately.”

At the event, it was also announced that Marriott would be revamping their own program, incorporating survivors and their feedback to help guide the production of new more scenario-based training modules. They will also be making it available industry wide by 2022. Chip Rogers stated, “The hotel industry is united in ending the scourge of human trafficking, and our No Room for Trafficking education and awareness efforts will continue until we reach that goal.” 

Sign your staff up today and do your part to aid in stopping human trafficking in hotels at https://www.ahla.com/no-room-trafficking-toolkits.