The hospitality industry is the fastest growing industry in the world with the incredibly large subset of the hotel industry. Hospitality centers on the feelings and comfort of the customer or guest, and it is taught in undergraduate hospitality programs that the product one sells is intangible-not as much the steak, but more so the sizzle. The most successful hotels are the ones that leave guests wishing that they could move in, and that give guests a warm, safe, comfortable environment. Amazingly enough though, every day across the United States, guests check into their prospective rooms not knowing that right next door, someone could be living their worst nightmare. Managers check in men and girls that could look like a father and a daughter on vacation, but in reality, the woman is being held hostage and sold multiple times a day and abused by that very man. Their struggle is silent and largely unknown, but it is anything but unreal. Amazingly enough, the industry most centered on comfort and safety is a hotbed for the exact opposite. Fortunately, awareness has been raised significantly about human trafficking over the last decade. Despite this though, most people do not realize how close they actually come to it in their everyday lives. It is essential to take steps to save these trafficked women to make our society a safer one, and the first step in this is combatting it in the hospitality industry. Hospitality workers have a responsibility to eliminate human trafficking in their businesses and to do their part to end these horrible practices.

A common misconception that many people have about slavery is that it is completely gone in our modern society. However, even though what we learned in school as slavery is virtually over, there is a new form of modern day slavery: human trafficking. Human trafficking is the use of  “force, fraud, or coercion” in order to force unsuspecting women into sexual exploitation (Blue). It is widespread, and happens in every part of the world every single day. These women are people’s sisters, mothers, and daughters and this horrible industry has unfortunately taken root in the United States. Though most people do not see the effects of this underground industry, it is alive and well: human trafficking is “the second most profitable form of traditional crime” behind drug trafficking, “generating billions of dollars every year” from these horrendous practices (Blue). Those who run these businesses are called traffickers; they are unfeeling, threatening, and determined. Overall, these people target young unassuming girls as their workers, often telling them that they have a job offer for them until they can dominate them and force them into their business. The average age of the girls they look for is thirteen years old. (Collins) These women can be American-born, or lured to the United States from overseas, making it even harder for them to break away once they enter the business. There is a huge amount of abuse involved in this business, both physical and emotional. 

Abusers use everything from beating, to threats, to sexual assault, to drugging to force women into sleeping with countless men throughout the day and night, all for their own profit. Once the traffickers break their victims, the victims tend to stay with them for many years because they lack the emotional and financial ability to leave due to the amount of control that the traffickers exercise over them. Sadly, even when these victims do escape from the clutches of their abusers, they never come forward about their experiences and past abuse because of the shame that they have after doing the things forced upon them by those who trafficked them. Trafficking victim Samantha Sanders said that while she was being trafficked she “didn’t feel like [she] could ask for help and [she didn’t feel] like [she] deserved help at that time” because of her drug use and the fact that she had dropped out of school at such a young age (KGUN9). She felt as if she deserved her treatment, which is heartbreaking to think that anyone could ever feel this way (KGUN9). Sadly, this terrible practice has been on the rise over the past few years, and without the proper awareness, things will continue in this way. It is so important that we as a society fight human trafficking and have a voice for the voices victims of this business.

When people hear stories of women who have survived trafficking, they often forget that every one of them have their own story, life, and family, which makes the idea of human trafficking that much more disturbing. We as a country are quickly losing our girls to predators. If these girls and women are lucky enough to make it out of these terrifying situations, their stories are harrowing and are a reminder that anyone could be a target. Amy Fine Collins shared a few such stories in her article “Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door” and details one from a young girl named Gwen. Gwen was barely eighteen when she met Brian Forbes, a well-off, manipulative pimp, through her aunt (Collins). He got to know her and spent lots of time with her until he gained her trust, as well as her friend Alicia’s (Collins). Before she knew it, Gwen was hooked on heroin, and one night Forbes took them to a hotel and forced them to sleep with multiple men (Collins). The girls tried to resist, but Forbes had easy control over them, and would rape them or withhold drugs from them, forcing them to have withdrawals (Collins). They had no way out, and were forced to do whatever he asked of them, no matter how uncomfortable it made them or how dangerous it was. After multiple pimps, rapes, seedy hotels, and countless acts of abuse, the girls eventually freed themselves from being trafficked when they were both arrested (Collins). When she was picked up on a sting, the officer who picked Gwen up described her as “strung out, desperate, and terrified,” a mere ninety pounds at best, and almost unable to carry on a conversation with him (Collins).

Gwen’s unbelievable story is sadly all to common for many girls across the United States.  This disturbing phenomenon has happened to all sorts of women, from teenage runaways to Catholic schoolgirls. In many cases though, these girls do not have families who are looking out for them or worrying about what could be happening to them, and they disappear without a trace. Once they are thrown into the dangerous lifestyle of the streets, they often get arrested, while their pimps roam the streets freely. What most fail to see when they see a girl on the street though is that she is a slave. Someone else’s property who is forced into what she is doing because her life depends on it. The use of the word prostitution, even with children, implies that the victim voluntarily participates in selling their body, when in most cases they do not (NRC). Unarguably, the hardest part of ending human trafficking the fact that it is a hidden business by nature. Also, despite efforts to raise awareness for this issue, the public is still largely unaware of its severity. There is an obvious gap between the information that the public is given about human trafficking and what they need to hear. 

Unfortunately, there is also no way for the public to be given accurate numbers and information about the scale of this issue because of the hidden nature of trafficking, meaning that numbers given to the public are merely guesswork of the researchers (Zhang). Even the numbers provided in this paper were some of the only numbers that could be found online and are used in multiple different articles and studies. There have been times when researchers have found that trafficking was an even bigger enterprise than they had predicted (Zhang). It is quite unpredictable and ever-changing, given that it is the business of buying, selling and sneaking people around behind closed doors. It is quite unfortunate that this is the case, because what most people do not realize is that they could have easily crossed paths with someone in trouble and they just did not know it. Better education for the public would easily help raise awareness for this issue tenfold, and the public getting involved would quickly lead to change. 

Besides human trafficking being a well-hidden business, when it is in front of most people, they do not recognize it because it is well disguised and not as obvious as many people may think. When the word “prostitute” comes to mind there is a certain image associated with the word. Most would say that they imagine someone standing on a street corner in the seedy part of town in the middle of the night. The woman looks shambly, and she hops into beaten up cars throughout the night and lives in a shack with multiple other prostitutes. While this image is true in some cases, in many others it couldn’t be further from the truth. Trafficking of women is absolutely everywhere now. It has become widespread thanks to the dawn of the internet, and the market for prostitution is growing to all classes, not just the sketchy part of town that everyone imagines. Oftentimes prostitutes could be very well dressed, well groomed, and led around by their pimp, possibly looking like a wealthy couple. More often than not, you may unknowingly see them at hotels. The hospitality industry has become a hotbed for trafficking activities lately because hotels are the easiest place for someone to be kept, and given the private nature of having a room at a hotel, it is perfect for running an underground secretive business like this one.

It is both unbelievable and scary to think that someone who is being held captive could be checked into the next room over at the Hilton, but it is all too real. Polaris, an anti-trafficking organization, created a text hotline in which people can report incidences of possible trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (Polaris). Polaris summarized all their information from one recording period on their app. They stated that there had been fourteen thousand thirty four cases of trafficking reported in hotels or motels and just under two thousand victims were identified in this period (Polaris). Over ninety percent of these cases were sex trafficking, and most people who called to report suspicious activity had had contact with the potential victim in their case. While these numbers may seem small, they are only from one study conducted associated with the texting hotline and they are just a fraction of the cases that are happening across the United States every single day. 

As human trafficking became a noticeable problem in Arizona hotels, investigators kept a tally of all the cases that were called in. In 2015 alone just in Arizona, there were one hundred and sixteen cases of human trafficking reported (KGUN9). It was quickly decided that the public had to be made aware of this so that they could aid in catching the perpetrators of this awful crime as well as standing up for the helpless victims.  All kinds of hotels are at equal risk to be used for trafficking activities because it is so widespread (Tuppen). That being said, there are most definitely times when trafficking is at a peak, such as in big cities around big events such as the Super Bowl. It is very easy for guests and workers alike to be unaware of suspicious activities, because perpetrators have become so good at hiding their crime. 

It is essential though that hotels do everything in their power to not be a place where any kind of unethical activities occur, especially human trafficking. Efforts have been building since around 2004 with countless companies that want to fight trafficking (Mohn). Slowly but surely, awareness is being raised around the hospitality industry, and large hotel companies have begun to hop on the bandwagon of ridding themselves of human trafficking. In fact, the Carlson hotel group helped to found the Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking, a coalition of companies looking to completely rid their business practices involving trafficking (Tuppen). In September of 2011, Sam Gilliland, CEO of Sabre Holdings (which owns the well-known company Travelocity), revealed that his company would be training their employees to identify and report cases of human trafficking in locations around the globe (Mohn). Similar movements have even spread to airlines and even buses in hopes to eliminate this issue completely (Mohn). This is a huge step forward given that for a long time now, the travel industry has unknowingly aided trafficking perpetrators in their endeavors. It is encouraging to see that some key players in hospitality are pushing forward on this issue.

There is no question that human trafficking is alive and well in the hospitality industry, but there is a need for further education for hospitality workers. Multiple authors and organizations such as Polaris and the United States Department of Homeland Security have published red flags for hotel workers to look for as they are on the job every day. While there are many things that would be more obvious when looking for a victim and their captor, there are other things that are less noticeable, but are just as important to look for. Front desk staff should pay attention to women who are malnourished, worn out or have poor hygiene (Blue). They will not have any control over anything like their IDs and may not even be allowed to speak (Blue). Housekeeping staff should make note of rooms with little or no personal possessions and excess technology like phones and computers (Blue). Staff should also look for people who only stay in their room for a few hours before packing up and leaving as well as cars that are backed into the spot so as to hide the license plate (Blue). It is important though that no matter what someone sees, they are never to confront a possible suspect, as they could possibly be armed and they are definitely dangerous. Alert law enforcement immediately if there is suspicious activity. Though each of these are little things, some even normal for people to do, when combined together they can look very suspicious and more often than not point to trafficking and forced prostitution. As hospitality workers who are responsible for their guests, every person has a responsibility to ensure the safety of every single person staying at their business.

There is also something that guests can do as well. With more information on trafficking coming out, it has led to more efforts to get the public involved in the fight against modern day slavery. In 2016, an smartphone app called TraffickCam was developed for general use. Travelers are asked to take pictures of their hotel rooms and the items inside of their rooms (furniture, etc.) in order to help law enforcement to identify where perpetrators are keeping their victims when they post pictures of them online (Goldberg). While this seems like a very small thing to do, the app has already helped law enforcement to rescue multiple girls from captivity from things as tiny as the pattern of the hotel room rug (Goldberg). The app is simple and easy to use, so there is no reason why everyone should not use it when staying away from home. TraffickCam should be endorsed by hotels for all their guests to use in order to help victims everywhere.

It is easy to overlook human trafficking as an issue in hotels because of the privacy involved with staying in one. But if just one person sees something that does not seem quite right and speaks up about it, it is all worth it if it helps others. As members of the fastest growing industry in the world, hospitality workers bear a responsibility to keep an eye out for unethical things happening in their businesses. While this is a very difficult job, it is absolutely worth it. Even though victims are well hidden, no one sees more hidden things than the staff of a hotel who know the interworking of it. If every single hotel implemented the policies listed in this paper, trafficking would go down significantly. The world would be a much safer place for women everywhere and some truly evil people could be put away as they should be. The key lies with this industry, and it is hospitality workers duty to look out for everyone who work through their doors.
