MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL LAUNCHED HotelHelp, a pilot room donation program for human trafficking survivors, at the AHLA Foundation’s third annual No Room for Trafficking Summit. The program works with care providers who handle bookings, offering survivors short-term stays at Marriott properties, Marriott said in a statement.
The program is being piloted in five U.S. cities—Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.—and is expected to expand to 25 cities across North America by January 2025.
“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, Marriott’s president and CEO. “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.”
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.
Room donations
HotelHelp is 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.
Marriott said the program uses 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 more than 8,700 room nights in 87 Marriott hotels across Europe. HotelSwaps continues to be a key 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, Marriott said. They can make reservations on behalf of their clients to protect survivors' confidentiality. Using a localized approach, HotelHelp connects care providers and hotels, encouraging collaboration to navigate the nuances of each stay.
This initiative comes one year after Marriott announced the national expansion of its Future in Training Hospitality Survivor Employability Curriculum in partnership with the University of Maryland SAFE Center. The FiT Curriculum, designed to provide trauma-informed job readiness training for survivors interested in hospitality careers, was deployed nationwide by the SAFE Center with an inaugural grant from the AHLA Foundation No Room for Trafficking Survivor Fund. Since July 2023, over 160 survivors have been trained across 11 U.S. cities.
Marriott and The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation jointly contributed $550,000 to the AHLA fund last year to increase access to opportunities through investments in frontline survivor support organizations.
The AHLA Foundation recently shared data on the impact of the $500,000 distributed to the four Survivor Grantees. Last July, the foundation launched the ‘No Room for Trafficking’ Advisory Council to unite industry leaders in combating trafficking, empowering survivors, providing resources, and overseeing the NRFT Survivor Fund for community organizations.
