Hotels and the hotel industry are at the front line of the fight against modern slavery. In the United States the National Human Trafficking Hotline identifies hotels as vehicles for both the sexual and labour exploitation of trafficked victims. The scale of trafficking of human beings (THB) is enormous. The Walk Free Foundation in 2017 advised that there were roughly 45.8 million global victims of human trafficking. This exploitation is a rapidly growing human rights crime that affects every country in the world.
What is human trafficking?
It is a form of modern day slavery, involving the movement of vulnerable persons through force, coercion or abuse for the purpose of sexual or labour exploitation. With low conviction rates for traffickers the many victims are hidden populations’ often when working in plain sight. This is not a phenomena restricted to developing countries and refugees, you are just as likely to find victims in London, New York, Brighton or Baltimore as you are Nairobi or Mumbai.
The CombatÊproject team
A project team consisting of four European academic institutions and funded by the European Commission’s Directorate of Home Affairs under the Internal Security Fund’s targeted call for Trafficking of Human Beings, has developed this toolkit as a result of research undertaken to combat the trafficking of human beings within the hospitality and tourism industry. The regular flow of migrant workers to meet the continually growing need for hospitality staff has been seen as a specific opportunity by those engaged in the criminal activity of human trafficking.
How do Combat prevent the problem of trafficking?
Not only does the toolkit raise the awareness of the problem it provides practical guidance on how to combat the trafficking of human beings. It seeks to help prevent the trafficking and to mitigate the exposure of hospitality and tourism businesses to criminal activity. It includes advice on the development of policies and strategies for the combating, reporting and supporting victims and the participation in anti-trafficking initiatives. This has the benefit of mitigating potential risks to the business and highlighting the moral and ethical obligations on the industry as employers.
What’s in the Combat Toolkit?
The toolkit contains reference guides and training materials for hotel executive management teams, senior management and members of staff, including Google Earth maps of the most common trafficking routes in Europe to aid in the identification of properties more exposed to traffickers. Seven case studies of human trafficking victims, who expose their exploitation within the industry, 30-minute and 10-minute training materials and a train-the-trainer guide are also provided.
Launched in October, 2016 in London, UK, the toolkit has attracted widespread attention and received positive feedback from hoteliers, police forces, government councils, NGOs and trade unions. The Combat project has also been awarded the SHARE/CHME (Council for Hospitality Management Education) Award and the ABTA/ATHE Award for research impact.
The toolkit has just received the formal endorsement of the Institute of Hospitality. The Institute has commented that:
This is very commendable initiative that provides hotels with a well-designed toolkit for use across all staffing levels. The high quality materials provided in the kit both raise the awareness of the issue and provide a flexibility to the user that ensures it is immediately applicable to their business.
The Combat project team hope that more hoteliers will make use of this valuable toolkit to reduce their risks of exposure to human trafficking and help prevent this crime. The toolkit can be downloaded, free of charge, from:
http://grow.ehotelier.staging.wpengine.com/combat-toolkit
For any further information on the Toolkit, contact Dr Maureen Brookes at meabrookes@brookes.ac.uk.
By Professor Peter A. JonesÊ
Professor Peter Jones is the Dean of the eHotelier Academy. With a distinguished career in hospitality, education and training, Peter has been involved with national and international projects with clients involved in hospitality education. Peter is a Director of the Edge Hotel School and of Hotel Future, a new education and training initiative in Greater Manchester and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Derby. He was also awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the hospitality industry.
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