Hospitality Industry Risk Update: “Preventing and Reacting to Child Trafficking”

While it’s important to speak up if suspicious behaviors arise, Guelbart stresses the importance of carefully assessing and reporting the situation. Trafficking endangers not only the victim in question but everyone under the hotel’s roof. “Trafficking is often connected with other criminal activity, including drugs or violent assault, and this can jeopardize the safety of hotel guests and employees,” Guelbart says. “You should never, ever directly get involved in a potential sex trafficking situation.”

Human trafficking may seem like a distant problem—something that only happens abroad or in the movies—but traffickers have checked into hotels across the nation. As the world’s second largest criminal industry, human trafficking exploits 100,000 to 300,000 American children (ages 12 and up) every year. In New York City alone, 44 percent of the child victims were sexually exploited in hotels.

The American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AH&LEI) and ECPAT USA, an organization dedicated to ending child sexual exploitation, have joined forces to educate hotel owners and employees on this issue. “Traffickers are now using technology. They’re selling children online—less and less on the street—and they might be living in a hotel setting, or they’ll bring the victim to a hotel for the exploitation,” says Michelle Guelbart, ECPAT USA director of private sector engagements.

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