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At the third annual No Room for Trafficking (NRFT) Summit hosted by the AHLA Foundation, Marriott International, Inc. announced the pilot launch of HotelHelp, a program designed to donate rooms to survivors of human trafficking. The initiative involves Marriott’s participating hotels offering short-term emergency accommodations, which are coordinated through established care providers for the survivors they support.
HotelHelp is currently being piloted in five U.S. cities: Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The program aims to expand to 25 cities across North America by January 2025. In the long term, Marriott plans to extend the program globally, include other hotel companies, and provide short-term accommodation to additional vulnerable communities.
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 created by HotelSwaps in collaboration with PKF International and the Bench, HotelHelp is designed to provide short-term hotel stays for those in need, including Ukrainian refugees. In the first three months of the conflict in Ukraine, HospitalityHelps facilitated over 100,000 room nights in 630 hotels, with over 8,700 room nights in 87 Marriott hotels across Europe. HotelSwaps remains a key partner in the ongoing development and operation of HotelHelp.
On the HotelHelp platform, participating care and service providers can book up to five room nights per person and make reservations on behalf of their clients, ensuring the confidentiality of the survivors they support. The platform fosters a localized approach, connecting care providers with participating hotels to navigate the unique needs of each stay.
This initiative coincides with the one-year anniversary of Marriott’s national expansion of its Future in Training (FiT) Hospitality Survivor Employability Curriculum, in partnership with the University of Maryland’s Support, Advocacy, Freedom, and Empowerment Center (the SAFE Center). The FiT Curriculum offers trauma-informed job readiness training for survivors interested in hospitality careers, deployed across the U.S. with initial funding from the AHLA Foundation No Room for Trafficking Survivor Fund. Since July 2023, more than 160 survivors have been trained in 11 U.S. cities. Marriott International and The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation collectively contributed $550,000 to the fund last year, supporting organizations at the forefront of survivor assistance.
Marriott’s longstanding commitment to advancing human rights includes its goal to train all on-property associates in human trafficking awareness by 2025, as part of its Serve 360 sustainability and social impact platform. Since the training’s inception in 2016, over 1.3 million associates across Marriott’s managed and franchised properties have been trained to identify and respond to potential human trafficking situations. The training, also available to the broader industry through PACT, has been completed over 1.6 million times. An enhanced version of this training is now accessible through the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, aiming to make this crucial resource available to hotel workers globally.
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