Legislation targets hotel industry

ORLANDO, FLA.» The men came, one after another, to a hotel room in the heart of the city’s tourism district. For $200 an hour, a 16-yearold girl was forced to have sex with the strangers while her pimp kept watch from a car in the hotel parking lot.

After a week, the girl confided in one of those strangers that she was being held against her will, and he helped her escape.

Staff members at the Grand Hotel Orlando told detectives they repeatedly saw two people escorting the men to a room.

Other guests complained of suspicious activity. Still, the two people — who were later arrested — were allowed to book rooms a few days at a time for two weeks.

Now, proposals headed to the Florida Legislature would allow victims to sue hotel owners and staff members as facilitators for human trafficking if they either knowingly or through willful blindness allow traffickers to rent rooms.

Another bill would require hotels and motels to have training programs for employees on identifying and reporting human trafficking.

Jan Rietveld, general manager of Grand Hotel Orlando, said he welcomes training. The hotel does not have a policy for reporting human trafficking, Rietveld said. But he said staff members know they are not to rent a room to someone they suspect of trafficking.

“I don’t want them here. It’s that simple. I don’t care what they pay,” Rietveld said.

A similar Pennsylvania law passed in 2014. A human trafficking survivor and her family in 2017 filed the first lawsuit against a Philadelphia motel where she said she was forced to have sex with hundreds of men over months at a time.

Other hotel groups have taken proactive approaches in recent years. Wyndham Hotel Group and Hyatt Hotels partnered with The Polaris Project, a national anti-trafficking nonprofit, to provide training. Hilton and Starwood Hotels & Resorts also have training.

Orlando has the thirdhighest number of calls per capita to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, according to The Polaris Project.

Hotels and motels across Florida emerged in 2015 as the most common places where trafficking occurs, according to The Polaris Project, which operates the hotline.

About one in six cases reported to the hotline in 2017 occurred in a hotel or motel.

Every one of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office’s trafficking cases used a hotel, said Sgt. Ed Olesen of the Criminal Investigations Division.