Abstract
Legitimate companies are key facilitators of human trafficking. These corporate facilitators include not only websites providing advertisements for commercial sex services but also hotels and motels. Analysis of all active federal criminal sex trafficking cases in 2018 and 2019 reveals that in approximately 80% of these cases, victims were exploited at either hotels or motels. This paper studies the prevalence of the hospitality industry in the crime of sex trafficking and the failure of this industry to address this problem until recent civil suits were filed by victims against individual hotels and chains. Drawing on the civil cases filed in federal courts by victims of human trafficking between 2015 and 2021 along the East Coast of the United States, this paper assesses the characteristics of these hotels and the conditions in the hotels that facilitated sex trafficking. The paper then explores the moral and ethical problems posed by the facilitating role of hotel owners/operators in sex trafficking either through collusion or failure to act on and/or report evidence of individual abuse. Suggestions on how to address the problem are provided.
Highlights
Hotel—Moral and Ethical Questions.The Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000 focused on the crime of human trafficking
The analysis of the characteristics and background of each identified hotel reveals that most of these sex trafficking locations cited in these civil lawsuits are economy hotels franchised by major hotel chains which are public companies
The analysis of the hotel locations where human trafficking has been identified shows that incidents of sex trafficking occur most frequently at hotels near the ramps of main and auxiliary interstate highways, indicating these transportation hubs are hotspots of sex trafficking crime
Summary
Hotel—Moral and Ethical Questions.The Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000 focused on the crime of human trafficking. Provisions were introduced by Congress in 2008 in the Reauthorization of the TVPA to hold specific entities and individuals liable for civil damages if they derived “financial benefit from human trafficking” (Shavers 2012). Entities such as motels and hotels as well as “massage parlors, restaurants, and even online platforms, that facilitate or financially benefit from a trafficking enterprise” have been sued only since 2015 even though this has been possible since 2008. City/County of the Hotel Location (Number of the Identified Hotels in Each City/County). Coral Springs (1), Fort Lauderdale (4), Fort Myers (5), Jacksonville (9), Kissimmee (2), Naples (20), Orlando (2), Plantation (3), Sunrise (1)
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