S2E2: Human Trafficking in Hospitality with Victoria Wehrman

This is a special student spotlight featuring Victoria Wehrman, a University of Nebraska Lincoln student.  Victoria talks about such an important topic in our industry - human trafficking. She points out that the majority of discussions around hospitality and human trafficking focuses in hotels, but another prominent sector for human trafficking is large male-dominated events. These are not just attendees, these are potential customers.  Victoria shares lots of information, great training points, and excellent resources.

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Transcript

Dr. K
In the Intro to Event class, students have to show mastery of the design thinking process. Students are able to show this mastery in a variety of different ways such as designing a training video, a game, or even a podcast. They are able to choose any topic and organize their activity in any way that they want, as long as they follow this design process. These student-created podcasts have offered so many insights into what students are thinking and experiencing that I have decided to take two Thursdays a month to feature these works of art. I hope you enjoy today's student created podcast.

Victoria
Hi, my name is Victoria Wehrman. I'm a student this semester in HRTM 289 Intro to Events at the University of Nebraska. This class, kind of as an overview, is an introduction to the world of event logistics and event planning. We've learned about topics related to the hospitality industry like floor plans, programs, schedules and budgets. For this podcast, we were assigned to pick a topic we discussed in class and to spend some time researching that topic, and then talk about our findings in our podcast. I'm currently recording this from my bedroom. So I hope you are as cozy as I am listening to this. 

Welcome to my first and probably my last hospitality podcast. But I guess we'll see how this one goes. I love commercials. I know, maybe that's weird. But so much thought and effort goes into every single commercial you see. And when I think of commercials, what event is the holy grail of commercials? You got it! The Super Bowl. Once a year the two best NFL teams in the nation meet face-to-face and millions of fans follow them to see it. The Superbowl is one of the biggest events in both advertising and hospitality each year in the US. The Superbowl generates hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, food and beverage, and hotel spending. It's the metaphorical mecca of hospitality and advertising in the US annually. However, along with being one of the biggest events for hospitality and advertising, it's also one of the biggest events easier for human trafficking. 

The topic that I chose to research for this podcast was human trafficking, and its direct consequences on the hospitality industry. In class, we've based a project and discussions around human trafficking and events. But I felt like I wanted to dig a little deeper into the subject. So throughout the length of this podcast, we're going to learn a little bit more about how prominent sex trafficking is in the hospitality industry, and what efforts are being taken to stop it or to slow it.  

First, let's talk about human trafficking. What is it? Who does it affect? Where does it happen? According to the Department of Homeland Security, human trafficking is basically modern day slavery. It means forcing, manipulating or coercing someone into sex trafficking, forced labor, or domestic servitude. For this podcast, I'm going to focus in specifically on the sex trafficking segment of human trafficking. Sex trafficking is any sort of manipulation, or lying or forcing someone to do something sexually, to themselves or to someone else, or even just to take inappropriate photos. 

As for who does it affect, it can affect all of us. It can affect you and me and families and law enforcement and people from all walks of life. However, the people who are most susceptible are women and children, who make up an estimated 71% of human trafficking worldwide. According to a 2016 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in the US specifically, people of color are far more at risk, with just African American women totaling 52% of sex trafficking victims. One of the more prominent similarities with sex trafficking victims is homelessness. This is a statistic that I had not even considered before. But I found out that 48% of sex trafficking victims under the age of 18, reported themselves as homeless, according to a study done by the human trafficking hotline. 

This puts the victim in a really vulnerable state, and the promise of shelter and food makes them easy to manipulate. When I was researching the effects of human trafficking in the hospitality industry, a huge majority of the information was based on hotels. But the other biggest hospitality events that human traffickers use are large, transient male dominated events, or more specifically, major sporting events. Events like these will cause huge spikes in human trafficking incidents because traffickers will see the influx of people as an influx of customers, which often it is. 

The largest sporting event and One of the largest human trafficking hotspots that the US sees is the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl brings millions of travelers to a new large city every year. The most recent Super Bowl was in Miami, Florida, which is already the sex trafficking capital of the state. To combat the spike in trafficking, Miami police significantly increase their on street presence in the week surrounding the Superbowl, and hotels in the area held sex trafficking summits for Hospitality employees throughout the city. 

The NFL, along with the MLB and the NCAA has released many campaign support videos with statements from players and coaches. These major events are always going to draw a massive crowd and traffickers will flock to use it as a distraction, but efforts for improvement are in the works. Like I mentioned before, the most common hospitality industry hotspot for human trafficking is hotels and motels. The trafficker will rent out one or a few rooms and men will be traveling in and out of these rooms in appointment style segments all day. 

Human trafficking is so common in these locations that many hotel and motel management staffs have started instituting mandatory sex trafficking signs trainings to their staff. This past semester, I actually worked at the front desk of a hotel, and I had to do their training on being able to identify the warning signs of sex trafficking. The training I had to study had four sectors based off the Department of Homeland Security study. 

The first section was for general staff, and that was to look out for individuals who seem malnourished or dressed inappropriately for their age, or had no control of their own money. The next segment is for housekeeping. If a room orders new linens or towels, but denies entry to the room, that's a huge red flag, as well the presence of any credit card swipers or excess technology. The third segment was for front desk staff. And some of the warning signs were renting multiple rooms, or renting a room for a night and only staying for a few hours. And the last second segment was food and beverage workers. Where the most prominent warning signs are individuals waiting alone in a lounge or bar, and going upstairs immediately after meeting another individual, or meeting multiple individuals in a day. These are just examples of the experiences that I've had in prevention training. But there are many other programs and resources available to hotels and motels. 

One that I found during my research was No Room for Trafficking, which is an awareness campaign launched by the American Hotel and Lodging Association to educate and support the fight to end human trafficking. They provide training kits, action plans for management and resource guides to best enable hotel staff to identify and to act. During this episode, we defined human trafficking and discussed which people are the most vulnerable, talked about how the Superbowl is a perfect storm for human traffickers, and how major host cities are putting efforts in place to slow or to stop the trafficking, and we've gone over some ways to spot human trafficking, and even some resources that are available to you or to other hospitality staff. 

I hope during this podcast that you learn something about human trafficking, and how it affects and shapes and molds the hospitality industry, and how you could help to identify and put a stop to human trafficking if you see it. Thanks for listening.

Dr. K
Human trafficking is not something to be taken lightly and we cover that topic a lot in our program. If you are listening to this podcast today, I highly encourage you to download the app traffickcam where you can help fight human trafficking simply by uploading photos of your hotel room to a central database that police can use to help locate victims.  Thank you again to Victoria Were-man for an enlightening and informative student created podcast and thank you all dear listeners for taking the time to make the time!