Marriott International’s New Initiative to Aid Trafficking Survivors

Marriott’s New Initiative Targets Anti-Trafficking and Survivor Empowerment

During the AHLA Foundation’s third annual No Room for Trafficking (NRFT) Summit, Marriott International, Inc. announced the trial launch of HotelHelp, a room donation program for survivors of human trafficking. HotelHelp currently collaborates with Marriott hotels that are willing to donate short-term emergency stays and established care providers who book these rooms for the survivors they support.

HotelHelp is being piloted in five U.S. cities: Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. It is expected to expand to 25 cities across North America by January 2025. In the long term, the company plans to scale the program to additional locations globally, involve other hotel companies, and extend services to vulnerable communities needing short-term accommodation.

Marriott’s President and CEO, Anthony Capuano, noted that survivors of human trafficking often have limited access to dedicated shelter beds, which puts them at a greater risk of being re-trafficked after exiting their trafficking situation. As part of its ongoing anti-trafficking and survivor empowerment efforts, Marriott is proud to have developed a solution to bridge the gap for safe, short-term accommodations for trafficking survivors. They also look forward to collaborating with other hotel companies to expand the program’s reach.

HotelHelp is modelled after the success of HospitalityHelps, an online booking platform that provides short-term hotel stays for Ukrainian refugees. During the first three months of the war in Ukraine, HospitalityHelps booked over 100,000 room nights in 630 hotels, including over 8,700 rooms in 87 hotels within the Marriott portfolio throughout Europe. HotelSwaps remains a crucial partner in the ongoing development and operation of HotelHelp.

Participating care and service providers can reserve up to five room nights per person on the HotelHelp platform and make reservations on behalf of their clients to protect their confidentiality. Using a localized approach, HotelHelp connects care and service providers with participating hotels and encourages them to collaborate to address the specifics of each stay.

This initiative follows Marriott’s national expansion of its Future in Training (FiT) Hospitality Survivor Employability Curriculum, designed to provide trauma-informed job readiness training for survivors interested in hospitality careers. The initiative was introduced in partnership with the University of Maryland Support, Advocacy, Freedom, and Empowerment Center (the SAFE Center). Over 160 survivors have been trained across 11 U.S. cities since July 2023. Marriott International, J. Willard, and Alice S. Marriott Foundation contributed $550,000 to the fund last year to support organizations on the frontline of survivor support.

Marriott aims to train all their on-property associates in human trafficking awareness by 2025 as part of its sustainability and social impact platform, Serve 360. Since the training was introduced in 2016, over 1.3 million of the company’s managed and franchised associates have been trained to recognize and respond to potential human trafficking situations. Additionally, the training modules Marriott has donated to the industry have been completed more than 1.6 million times through PACT. Furthermore, the enhanced version of Marriott’s human trafficking awareness training is now available through the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance to make this vital resource more accessible to hotel workers worldwide.