As travel demand continues to grow, Marriott International (MAR) is leading a movement to address one of the biggest social issues in the hospitality industry.
“Human trafficking is a scourge of humanity, and unfortunately, much of it takes place in hotels,” Marriott International President and CEO Anthony Capuano told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “That’s why we developed an intensive training program for our employees a few years ago.”
First launched in 2016, the hotel chain’s human trafficking awareness program trains employees to recognize potential signs of human trafficking, monitor situations, and take action or report while victims are being assisted.
The program aims for all hotel employees to meet these training requirements by 2025 at the hotel chain’s 8,200 locations in 138 countries worldwide.
People are seen at the reception desk of a hotel in Valparaiso, Chile, on November 1, 2019. (REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido)
More than one million Marriott employees have completed over 570,000 hours of this specialized risk prevention training. In addition, more than 800,000 employees from competing hotel chains such as Hilton (HLT) and Hyatt Hotels (H) have participated in the training program, according to Capuano.
“We have a lot to do,” said the CEO. “But I can give you dozens of instances where our smart, focused staff have taken what they learned in this training and actually thwarted ongoing human trafficking activities.”
How Marriott fights human trafficking
Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to exploit and gain from individuals. It can take the form of forced labour, sexual exploitation, drug smuggling or even debt bondage.
Activist organizations like the Polaris Project estimated that at least 27.6 million people were trafficked against their will in 2021. Alarmingly, human trafficking cases increased by 12% between 2016 and 2021, according to the report.
State Department officials cited the Russia-Ukraine war and natural disasters related to climate change as potential catalysts for the rise in human trafficking. Although any person or group can be a victim of human trafficking, the homeless, LGBTQ+ and migrant youth have emerged as the most vulnerable populations to human trafficking.
Generating up to $150 billion in illicit profits annually, criminal activity is a particular concern for the hospitality industry.
Although Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham (WH) have been proactive in fighting human rights abuses, they were among 12 hotel chains named in a series of lawsuits filed by trafficking victims in 2019 alleging violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act Incidental corporate profits from criminal activities have been alleged in connection with the re-licensing of victims of human trafficking.
Gabriel Warren steps up prevention of human trafficking during this special training for hotel employees and management in advance of the upcoming Super Bowl events in South Florida on Wednesday, January 22, 2020 in Miami. (James McEntee/AP Images for Hilton)
In response, Marriott has built on its original anti-human trafficking intervention program by seeking input from real human trafficking survivors and partnering with the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) and ECPAT-USA, an anti-trafficking organization, to make the training available to Marriott’s competitors.
At the same time, Capuano acknowledged that the program faced a number of challenges.
For one, human trafficking situations have been exacerbated by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic as more hotel chains adopt contactless approaches to guest check-in.
Additionally, it can be difficult for employees to know when to escalate concerns, especially since employees are also trained to respond to guest experiences.
“We’re in the hospitality business, so we — our employees — aren’t used to surveying our guests, surveying our guests, if you will,” Capuano said. “And so there’s a lot of education if you see something that worries you. How can you improve it in the management ranks of the hotel?”
The latest edition of Marriott’s anti-trafficking program is just one facet of its long-standing ESG initiatives, which include additional goals associated with net-zero emissions, gender pay equality, humanitarian assistance and hospitality leadership training for black students.
“It’s a big focus for the company [and] it’s a personal passion for me and my family,” Capuano revealed, adding that while the number of employees who have progressed through the program is “really gratifying,” the company is “not complacent.”
Luke is a producer for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter @theLukeCM.
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