Hotels train staff to read signs of modern slavery

The 400 staff at Shiva hotels — from recep­tion­ists to human resources staff to clean­ers — will be trained as part of a com­pany-wide cam­paign to tackle mod­ern slavery.

“As a major busi­ness sec­tor involving mil­lions of people, the hotel industry has a real oppor­tun­ity to help pre­vent these crimes,” said Nishma Jeth­wa, pro­ject lead at Shiva Found­a­tion, an anti-traf­fick­ing group fun­ded by Shiva Hotels.

The new pro­gramme, which includes man­dat­ory staff train­ing and a cam­paign to raise aware­ness among cus­tom­ers in the hotel lobby, is part of a grow­ing drive to remove human traf­fick­ing from the hos­pit­al­ity sector.

So far, 81 work­ers have gone through the two-hour train­ing, which gives staff insight into signs of pos­sible traf­fick­ing such as alco­hol and drugs in a room, or a child stay­ing over.

Each year, 93,000 people are sexu­ally exploited and 4,500 oth­ers exploited for labour in European hotels, accord­ing to a 2016 study.

Hotel rooms can be used to film por­no­graphy, where women and chil­dren are sexu­ally exploited, or as a base for traf­fick­ers and their vic­tims before vic­tims are sold into sex or forced labour, accord­ing to experts.

Hotels also rely on low-skilled and often migrant labour, which increases the risk of labour exploit­a­tion, either in the hotel itself or its sup­ply chains.

“It’s much wider than the use of hotels. As an employ­er and large industry, hos­pit­al­ity must also con­sider sup­ply chains and its own hir­ing policies,” Jeth­wa told the Thom­son Reu­ters Foundation.

In Novem­ber 2016, major hotel groups, includ­ing the Hilton and Shiva Hotels, pledged to exam­ine their sup­ply chains for forced labour, train staff on how to spot and report signs of traf­fick­ing, and raise aware­ness among guests.

Meen­al Sach­dev from the Shiva Found­a­tion and founder of the Stop Slavery Hotel Industry Net­work (and who is fea­tured in the embed­ded video above) said in Novem­ber that many hoteliers are on the front­line of the fight against slavery because hotels were being used to sexu­ally exploit traf­fick­ing victims.

“Busi­nesses have a big role to play. It’s not just the gov­ern­ment’s job, it’s not just char­it­ies work­ing on the ground try­ing to pro­tect these vic­tims,” said Sachdev.

“People don’t really know what tan­gible steps they can take. But you don’t need to leave your sec­tor to go and do some­thing about this problem.”

With sup­port from the Brit­ish Hotel Asso­ci­ation and the Inter­na­tion­al Tour­ism Part­ner­ship, Sach­dev said she hopes hotels across the globe will join the net­work and fol­low the group’s stance against mod­ern slavery.

Source: Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

Fea­tured image: Old-school hotel room keys by Hans via Pixabay.