Being knowledgeable about local, global and intercultural issues is one of the prime dimensions of being globally competent. One of the biggest social issues in the hotel industry is human trafficking. Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit and profit from individuals. It can take the form of forced labor, sexual exploitation, drug smuggling, or even debt bondage. Activist organizations such as the Polaris Project estimated that there were at least 27.6 million people trafficked against their will in 2021. Alarmingly, incidents of human trafficking rose by 12% between 2016 and 2021, the report found. Marriott introduced a human trafficking awareness program in 2016, which trains employees on how to identify potential signs of human trafficking, monitor situations, and act or report on them while providing aid to victims. The program aims to have all on-property staff fulfill these training requirements by 2025 across the hotel chain’s 8,200 locations in 138 countries worldwide. Read the full article here:

Marriott CEO: Human trafficking is a huge problem for hotels — here’s what we’re doing about it (yahoo.com)