New initiative furthers company's commitment
to anti-trafficking and survivor empowerment
BETHESDA, Md., July 30,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- At the AHLA Foundation's third
annual No Room for Trafficking (NRFT) Summit in connection with
World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, Marriott International,
Inc. announced the pilot launch of HotelHelp, a rooms donation
program for survivors of human trafficking. HotelHelp currently
works with Marriott's portfolio of 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, including
Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and is expected to expand to
25 cities across North America by
January 2025. Over the long term, the
company plans to scale the program to additional locations
globally, to other hotel companies, and to serve other vulnerable
communities in need of short-term accommodation.
"Survivors of human trafficking often face a shortage of
dedicated shelter beds that put them at greater risk of being
re-trafficked after exiting their trafficking situation," said
Anthony Capuano, President and CEO
of Marriott International. "As part of our longstanding
anti-trafficking and survivor empowerment efforts, we are proud to
have developed a solution to bridge the gap for safe, short-term
accommodations for trafficking survivors and we look forward to
working with other hotel companies to extend the reach of this
effort."
Modeled after the success of HospitalityHelps, an online booking
platform established by HotelSwaps in collaboration with PKF
International, and the Bench to provide short-term hotel stays for
Ukrainian refugees, HotelHelp leverages a proven system to
facilitate room donations for people in need. During the first
three months of the war in Ukraine, HospitalityHelps booked over 100,000
room nights in 630 hotels – including over 8,700 room nights in 87
hotels within the Marriott portfolio throughout Europe. HotelSwaps continues to be a key
partner in the ongoing development and operation of HotelHelp.
On the HotelHelp platform, participating care and service
providers can reserve up to five room nights per person and make
reservations on behalf of their clients to protect the
confidentiality of the survivors they serve. Using a localized
approach, HotelHelp introduces care and service providers and
participating hotels to one another and encourages them to work
together to navigate the nuances of each stay.
This initiative comes exactly one year after Marriott announced
the national expansion of its Future in Training (FiT) Hospitality
Survivor Employability Curriculum in partnership with the
University of Maryland Support,
Advocacy, Freedom, and Empowerment Center (the SAFE Center). The
FiT Curriculum, designed to provide trauma-informed job readiness
training for survivors interested in careers in hospitality, was
deployed across the country by the SAFE Center with an inaugural
grant from the AHLA Foundation No Room for Trafficking Survivor
Fund. More than 160 survivors have been trained across 11 U.S.
cities since July 2023. Marriott
International and The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation
jointly contributed $550,000 to the
fund last year to help increase access to opportunity through
investments in organizations on the frontline of survivor
support.
Marriott's long history and deep commitment to advancing human
rights is underpinned by its efforts to train all 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. Outside of
Marriott, the training modules that Marriott has donated to the
industry have been completed more than 1.6 million times through
PACT. In addition, the enhanced version of Marriott's human
trafficking awareness training is now available through the World
Sustainable Hospitality Alliance as the company works to make this
important resource more accessible to hotel workers around the
world.
To learn more about Marriott International's work to combat
human trafficking globally visit Welcome All and Advance Human
Rights I Marriott International Serve360.
About Marriott International
Marriott International,
Inc. (Nasdaq: MAR) is based in Bethesda,
Maryland, USA, and encompasses a portfolio of nearly 8,900
properties across more than 30 leading brands in 141 countries and
territories. Marriott operates and franchises hotels and licenses
vacation ownership resorts all around the world. The company offers
Marriott Bonvoy®, its highly awarded travel program. For
more information, please visit our website
at www.marriott.com. In addition, connect with us
on Facebook and @MarriottIntl
on X and Instagram.
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SOURCE Marriott International, Inc.