Contemporary Issue in Tourism: Human Trafficking & Exploitation

This project report focuses on the issue of human trafficking and exploitation in the tourism industry. It includes a literature review on the topic and provides best practice guidelines for managers. The report highlights the negative impact of this issue on the tourism industry and suggests strategies to combat it.

Contemporary Issue in
Tourism - Human
Trafficking &
Exploitation in Tourism

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Element 1................................................................................................................................3
Element 2................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
The tourism industry is one of the largest industry that contributes in a huge manner to
economy of a nation. Though, there are different types of issues which affect to this industry
in a negative manner. One of the common issue in this industry is Human Trafficking &
Exploitation. Human trafficking & exploitation includes recruitment, harbouring or
transportation through abuse, frustration or intimidation into circumstances of oppression
and is compelled to resist their will. The project report is based on this issue and its impact
on tourism industry. The project report is categorised into two elements in which first
element clearly explain about this issue in terms of literature review. While second element
is based on best practice guide for managers in this industry.
MAIN BODY
Element 1.
Tourist industry is one of the largest industries worldwide and plays a significant part in global
exchange. The tourism production' represents or even exceeds that of crude, food or automotive
export. There has been a surge in productivity in the travel sector over the last 70 years. The
number of tourists has grown from 25 billion in 1950 to 806 billion in 2005, as per the WTO.
The number of asylum seekers is projected to develop into various destinations worldwide.
Foreign visitors came to 1,87 million in 2013, up 52 million from the prior year. Human slavery
is a major issue for the film and hospitality business. 45% of illegally produced casualties have
been processed in hotels in New York City. Every region of the planet has female tourists except
Antarctica. Abortion is legal around the globe in 49 nations, 12 have restricted regulations on
other forms of sex and 39 have legislation on illicit prostitution. In this part of report, detailed
analysis of Human trafficking & exploitation in tourism industry has been done by help of
review of different authors. Herein, underneath literature review is done below in such manner:
According to Walters and Devis, (2011) smuggling in human beings and other aspects, including
existing laws and concepts, cases and reports of victims and smugglers at the boundary from the
United States to Mexico, is represented from social sciences and policing viewpoints. Basically,
due to this issue, tourism industry gets effected in a negative manner. It is so because if there will
be more number of cases of human trafficking and exploitation in tourism then people will try to

avoid to visit new places. As a result, the total amount of revenues will be affected in a negative
manner. There are many challenges in the tourist industry, from infrastructure to jobs. Sex
trafficking has become a significant area of concern. Sex trafficking is a global problem for the
entertainment and tourism industry. 45% of economically abused victims have been abused in
hotels in New York City. Nearly every part of the planet experiences sex tourism except
Antarctica. Abortion is legal in 49 countries worldwide, there are restricted laws in 12 countries
which allow for certain aspects of prostitution, and in 39 cities trafficking is illegal. Perhaps one
of the best recognized nations with legal prostitution in Amsterdam, the Netherlands is the Red
Light Area. Traffickers focus on young, lonely and vulnerable men. Issues like autonomy, social
isolation, and economic insecurity are a consequence of practices and policies which
delegitimize and render trafficked people especially vulnerable to entire classes of people. The
still specious policies on social security are being undermined by natural hazards, war and
political instability. In developed nations, sex tourism is generally thought to take place beyond
regulated trafficking. For visitors from Australia, Europe, Japan and the USA Thailand is a
popular place for tourism. Due to higher sex trafficking in these developed nations, people
avoids to go because of higher risk of exploitation. Despite a variety of tourism areas rapidly
becoming commodified and incorporated, smugglers and visitors in search of sexual acts have
taken advantage of the system. Amnesty international Australia reports that 250,000 people visit
Asians annually for minimal sex with 13% of the female visitors from Australia. Experts find it
hard to identify the specific traveller who can engage in sex tourists, as tourists can travel on
different occasions for purposes such as company, leisure or bachelors. Some visitors can come
to brothels or strip bars, while others can hire girls every hour, night or for a certain amount of
days. All these aspects make tourism sector less effective and become cause of lower attraction
of visitors. Apart from it, traffickers focus on those children whose age is below 18 because they
can easily convince them to go in the labour market. According to Reid, (2012) was pointed out
that female’s victims of sexual exchange were attracted by a proxy or a trafficker, as a friend, to
sexual activity. Male traffickers are often forced into sex because of their families and
community’s rejection due to sexual orientation. Basically, traffickers focus on those victims
whose age is between 12 to 14 years. This is so because in this age, children don’t know about
trafficking. Sex traffickers both domestic and foreign may be smuggled. Open boarders among
nations collaborated to human smuggling because travel paperwork, as in the scenario of Nepal

and India, is not needed. It makes easier to traffickers to do smuggling of people from one nation
to another nation. As well as tourists can also go in these nation without any issue and tourists
who come from foreign nations can face this problem. According to Rice, (2014) In order to
combat smuggling, the tourism and hospitality sector has become more conscious of and
enforcing its programs. The creation of the code is a big step forward for the sector. In 1996 a
code of practice was developed for travel and tourism companies to protect women from sexual
assault during a World Convention Against Sexual Exploitation of Children. There were 1,287
sovereign states of the code and 140,096 qualified workers in 52 nations in 2013. The present
signing of this code are the Accor Hotels, Hilton Glob wide, Sabre Holdings. Sabre Holds has
always been instrumental in educating workers regarding trade in human beings. The'
Independence Passport ' system was designed to prepare 10,000 citizens to recognise and
disclose sex trafficking to legislative bodies. This act has been working effectively in order to
overcome from the issues mentioned above. Herein, this is important to know that government of
nations in which sex trafficking is higher should make effective policies and plans. If they will
do so then it will be easier for tourists to visit new places with full of freedom. Interested parties
in accommodation and tourism are frequently unwell about the signals and thus may relate
unwittingly to the human exploitation and transport of people trafficked. The industry will
investigate further how corporations are related to human slavery and sex tourism. Therefore, the
travel and hospitality sector has a public and spiritual obligation to help deter and discourage sex
trafficking. A lack of knowledge regarding human trafficking is a worldwide problem. This is
still not well known by travel and hospitality workers how many offenders are targeted by travel
firms. Trains, ferries, and aircraft have inadvertently carried exploitation suspects, while resorts
have supplied smugglers with the ability to offer their lives to visitors and other sex workers. The
United states emphasized the need for travel and hospitality sector to help combat the smuggling
in citizens. The transport sector has also sought to raise workplace understanding of indicators of
possible smuggling in human beings. Another indication of airlines operating together was the
Blue Lightning Project, the Ministry of Homeland Defence, Customs and Frontiers and the
Aviation Department. As per the opinion of Freida M'Cormack, (2011) The effect of trafficking
is experienced both in the places into which citizens are trafficked as well as in the areas they are
smuggled to. Such as All sets of nations may have significant consequences for public security
with the actions of organized crime organizations, whose illegal practices also go beyond

trafficking. Moreover, women and children forced into prostitution for the purposes of sexual
trafficking are at risk of HIV / AIDS as well as other highly contagious illnesses and the
transmission of diseases in society; citizens are smuggled in unsafe situations and sometimes
held in conditions that may have lengthy-term negative consequences on their physical and
emotional well-being, when they enter their locations. There have been various issues which may
human trafficking survivors may suffer like emotional consequences during their suffer while
being exploited. Most patients can wind up suffering post-traumatic stress, marriage strain,
depression, lack of memory, depression, paranoia, remorse, shame as well as other severe types
of emotional trauma. In addition, Most people experience serious disabilities, too. Traffickers
and clients often misuse those who were sexually exploited. They that be abused, tortured and
exposed to long-term violence. The chance of developing sexually transmissible diseases,
tuberculosis, asthma, diabetes and cancer is often greater. A lack of adequate medical care causes
these diseases to grow and get worse often significantly impacting the well-being of a person.
Most women who survive a condition of slavery neglect specialized schooling and the tools
available to find employment. In the nation where they now live, they cannot recognize the rules
or do not know English. At an early age they could have been sexually exploited and did not
attend training or even go to work.
Element 2
The process of recruiting, transporting or harbouring the individual within a condition
where they are forced by someone to work and give all their benefits via implementing violence,
coercion etc. The estimated age of perpetrators of exploitation in human beings is about 12-14
years (Kempadoo and Pattanaik, 2015). Unless government and other dealing bodies focus our
energies on improving the funding network for reducing the problem of human exploitation there
cannot be any change. Thus there have been different practices which can be used to reduce the
increasing number of human trafficking in tourism industry. Trafficking has an enormous human
and social effect. Evidently harmful and inappropriate effects on people and culture range from
violent violence and survivors ' suffering and social and mental traumas, to the economic and
political consequences of unabated criminality. Some are defined underneath:

At the Senior management level: To discourage sex trafficking, using charts displaying
smuggling and distribution paths to classify the assets in their surrounding portfolio. A growing
number of conservative executives are utilizing criminal graphs that indicate the specific rates of
danger per group of assets. This program is an important method for managing them.
At the corporate management level: Create anti-trafficking strategies (including supply
chains) and track their efficacy with the use of KPIs such as the amount of anti-trafficking
educational programs provided and enrolment, amount of assets that have completed a sex
trafficking risk evaluation each year, percentage of alleged cases identified internally. In fact,
business managers should collaborate together with police or autonomous agencies to deter this
violence and help the victims.
At the operational level: Creating hurdles such as complete background investigations on
all prospective hires (including address and bank information in wage reviews), participating in
meetings with new workers, and introducing a buddy program to ensure connections across all
workers and daily education and training programs on staff (Farrell and Bright, 2015).
Employment policies and business culture often promote sex trafficking, including:
importance of fulfilling consumer requests that reach outside legal limits, lack of background
checks for potential hires, lack of workplace sensitivity and lack of alert sign instruction.
Furthermore, apprehension of workplace termination if hotel disclose alleged crimes and lack of
concrete intervention to tackle trafficking. For example, perpetrators of forced labour are
typically lonely and unable to socialize, sometimes agreeing to serve at social events and as
much as necessary taking overtime shifts. Separately, such actions do not show anything but, put
collectively and present a simple image of a person becoming trafficked. Moreover, there can be
more steps that can be supportive in order to reduce the human exploitation in tourism industry.
Such as:
Fundraising: Keeping a fundraising and contributing the money collected to some of the
myriad organisations that help combat exploitation in human beings not only brings the charity
funds but also increases consciousness of the issue. Many sex exploitation organisations are not -
for-profit entities that depend on donations. Holding donors supports certain charities running
which are focused to provide valuable services to the person or needy one those are working
without their will in different hotels all over the world.

Volunteer: Time and commitment to donate at an anti-trafficking agency is a perfect
opportunity at commit to fighting sex trafficking. Besides supporting the company, themselves
more and more people there will be as a volunteer have the chance of growing the service in the
respective hotels or any other tourist destination. For instance, unseen is a non-profit
organisation that supports sex trafficking victims by offering expert services to support them
navigate the road of healing. With Unknown there are many service positions varying in time
contribution rates.
Must be aware about signals to human exploitation: Getting publicly trained on
indications that may mean that someone is a survivor of trafficking in human beings improves
the probability of detection and may provide a voice or reaching out to individual who may not
feel safe. Two of the major things to search at are inadequate working and living environments,
bad mental wellbeing and loss of power (Burke, 2017).
Enrage within events to raise awareness: Awareness increasing for sex exploitation
can therefore attract more individuals and be more involved in entering to fight against the
forceful work of human. This will cause a chain reaction, contributing to more advocacy,
recruitment and self-education. There are effective means of increasing awareness of this issue
and attracting new members such as Human Trafficking act which guide the worker to actually
know the total working hour and actual pay they should receive while working.
Help the survivors: Make a donation of food and other products to centres for sex
trafficking victims. Furthermore, urge employers to send survivors work, helping them get
people back on their feet and have a new start. Providing legal counsel to claimants, where
appropriate, presents them with an incentive not just to step on but also to seek redress. Helping
patients and adding to their rehabilitation in their path prevents the process of pain and ensuring
it does not replicate itself.
Stay informed and report suspicions: There are number of pro-trafficking groups with
forums and alerts that users may contribute in order to reduce the issue of human exploitation.
Holding these group to know that sex trafficking proper remedies are provided to increase their
standard of living. For instance, Polaris Foundation, a non-profit group, provides alerts to
anybody who wants to connect by email. Understanding the resources available is very much
critical in present uneven changing tourism sector. If travelling overseas, it is helpful to look up

the nation's international phone service to allow fast reporting should a target of trafficking be
noticed.
Enables to combat the demand: Constant competition for cheap labour and slavery is
the biggest thing that makes sex trafficking as a major problem (Haynes, 2014). Traffickers
through switch to websites like Craigslist and Back page to exploit possibly helpless survivors.
Implementing stronger authenticity tests on these domains and providing work across more
reputable internet channels hits the source of the epidemic and prevents sex exploitation before it
even continues.
CONCLUSION
In terms of human exploitation by lodging and transportation, the travel and service industry
plays an involuntary role. The travel and the service industry, because of its scale and global
scope, will play a significant role in mitigating sex trafficking victimization. Further research is
required in the empirical sector to better understand the extent and the function of the hotel
industry in sex trade. With the development of the potential of prostitution in multiple areas,
investors will tackle new problems. Although the efforts of travel and entertainment companies
to build awareness-raising and training programmes, more remains to be done. Establishing
policies and procedures, educating staff, details for visitors and the expression of null acceptance
of contractual sexual harassment through the supply chain should and should be included.

REFERENCES
Books and journal:
Kempadoo, K., Sanghera, J. and Pattanaik, B., 2015. Trafficking and prostitution reconsidered:
New perspectives on migration, sex work, and human rights. Routledge.
Farrell, A., Pfeffer, R. and Bright, K., 2015. Police perceptions of human trafficking. Journal of
Crime and Justice. 38(3). pp.315-333.
Burke, M. C. ed., 2017. Human trafficking: interdisciplinary perspectives. Routledge.
Haynes, D. F., 2014. The celebritization of human trafficking. The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 653(1), pp.25-45.
Walters and Devis 2011. The dynamic reference concept: measuring restoration success in a
rapidly changing no-analogue future. Ecological Restoration. 30(1). pp.27-36.
Reid, J. A. (2012). Exploratory review of route-specific, gendered, and age-graded dynamics of
exploration: Applying life course theory to victimization in sex trafficking in North
America. Aggression and Violent Behaviour, 17(3), 257-271.
Rice, K. (2014, May 7). The war on human trafficking. Travel Weekly. Retrieved from
http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Travel-Agent-Issues/The-war-on-human-
trafficking
Online:
Ways to reduce Human trafficking. 2020. [Online] Available Through:
<https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/human-trafficking-hospitality-industry>.
World Tourism Organization. (2004). Indicators of sustainable development for tourism
destinations. A guidebook. UNWTO.