Hilton Hotels addressing the issue of sex trafficking

By the end of the year, hotel chain Hilton Worldwide will be putting into place an internal code of conduct to help prevent sex trafficking at its hotels. The corporation was caught in a scandal back in June when the Chinese police discovered a brothel operating inside a Hilton hotel karaoke club in Southern China. Immediately after, organizations such as ECPAT (which fights child trafficking) and Change.org (a social-action website), along with angry campaigners, began pressuring the hotel chain — including pushing an online petition — to take on greater corporate social responsibility for what goes on within their facilities.

In response, the company entered into “regular discussions with [ECPAT] to develop an updated global business ethics policy that will specifically address commercial child exploitation concerns,” stated Jennifer Silberman, Hilton’s vice president of CR, to the Washington Business Journal.

“Hilton Worldwide absolutely and outright condemns all forms of human trafficking and commercial exploitation, including the sexual exploitation of men, women or children,” Silberman continued in her statement to the Business Journal.

The ECPAT code of conduct that Hilton Worldwide will be signing on to by the end of the year requires hotels to establish an ethical policy on the commercial sexual exploitation, train employees to detect and report trafficking activities, and introduce a clause repudiating commercial sexual exploitation of children in contracts with suppliers. To date, 900 companies have signed the code, though the list only includes one U.S.-based company: Carlson, parent to chains such as the Radisson, Park Plaza, and Country Inns and Suites.

Marriott International is among the hotel chains that have not yet signed but a spokesperson stated to the Washington Business Journal that initiatives are in place that “mesh with the code of conduct.” Still, many advocates of the code of conduct emphasize the need to bring under public scrutiny the efforts of hotels in fighting commercial sexual exploitation, and that this can be done under the code.

According to Carol Smolenski, executive director of ECPAT-USA, the U.S. has been a laggard in combating trafficking, specifically child sex trafficking. ECPAT-USA had already asked major U.S. hotels to sign the code of conduct years ago but none had yet to sign (with the exception of Carlson). She did express that the communication with Hilton has been positive and that the the hotel chain had approached ECPAT-USA to address the problem they saw to be prevalent and condemnable.

The hope is that Hilton’s move to take on stricter ethical policies revolving around the issue of commercial sexploitation will encourage other U.S.-based hotels to adopt a code of conduct that helps in the fight against trafficking.