Fall 2022 • PENNSYLVANIA RESTAURANT & LODGING matters • 17 In today’s hospitality environment, it is smart to focus on human trafficking prevention as a foundational strategy. Traffickers often attempt to use hotels to commit the exploitation of vulnerable people. Unhindered, this can lead to legal risks, reputational risks, business disruption, financial implications, and most importantly—ethical risks— since human trafficking is such a serious human rights issue. There is no doubt that hoteliers do not want their businesses to be abused by traffickers, or the safety of their guests to be jeopardized. That’s why PRLA has teamed up with the nonprofit, Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking (BEST), to help keep members informed on how to recognize and respond to potential human trafficking situations. This partnership is helping hotel and motel owners get the most from their member benefits by offering a free videobased human trafficking prevention training for all lodging facility staff and managers. BEST was founded 10 years ago and is the first nonprofit organization in the country dedicated entirely to working with businesses to disrupt human trafficking. BEST strives to help hoteliers learn how to prevent, detect, and report suspected human trafficking activity to keep children and vulnerable people safe from human trafficking. And they help protect hotels from being a venue where traffickers can conduct their abuse and exploitation. The hospitality industry is highly vulnerable to human trafficking, especially when it comes to child commercial sexual exploitation and forced sex trafficking. BEST created their Inhospitable to Human Trafficking training specifically for the hospitality industry. This training takes 30-minutes, is available in English or Spanish, and it can be delivered to staff as a group training or taken individually on a computer. This free video-based training clearly shows why hotels are vulnerable to human trafficking, and how to identify the critical intervention points where signs of trafficking can be spotted. Other key takeaways for staff include the difference between sex trafficking and labor trafficking, the definition of the commercial sexual exploitation of children, and how to spot the indicators of human trafficking. BEST also created an additional training module that’s just for managers and owners to help hotel executives learn how to appropriately respond when a team member reports a suspected human trafficking situation. The manager training module includes information on how to safely report human trafficking in a way that helps protect victims, staff, and other guests. Over the past year, BEST has been able to train thousands of hotel employees to be able to spot and report suspected human trafficking incidents. In a recent study, researchers from Arizona State University evaluated the training. They surveyed hospitality workers before and after taking the training. Before training, 22 percent of respondents said they had high or very high knowledge on how to recognize sex trafficking in hotels. After completing the training, reports of high or very high knowledge increased to 83 percent of respondents. Additionally, 97 percent of the employees surveyed said the training will positively impact their ability to prevent human trafficking in their hotels. To take the free Inhospitable to Human Trafficking training offered by PRLA, contact Director of Education Hope Sterner at hsterner@prla.org. Katie Amodei is the Director of Development & Communications for the Seattle-based nonprofit, Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking. Their goal is to inspire more employers to make a difference in the fight against human trafficking through awareness raising, consultation, training, and providing employment opportunities for survivors.
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