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Legitimate companies are key facilitators of human trafficking. These corporate facilitators include not only websites providing advertisements for commercial sex services but also hotels and motels. Analysis of all active federal criminal sex trafficking cases in 2018 and 2019 reveals that in approximately 80% of these cases, victims were exploited at either hotels or motels. This paper studies the prevalence of the hospitality industry in the crime of sex trafficking and the failure of this industry to address this problem until recent civil suits were filed by victims against individual hotels and chains. Drawing on the civil cases filed in federal courts by victims of human trafficking between 2015 and 2021 along the East Coast of the United States, this paper assesses the characteristics of these hotels and the conditions in the hotels that facilitated sex trafficking. The paper then explores the moral and ethical problems posed by the facilitating role of hotel owners/operators in sex trafficking either through collusion or failure to act on and/or report evidence of individual abuse. Suggestions on how to address the problem are provided.
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From Guest to Family: An Innovative Framework for Enhancing Memorable Experiences in the Hotel Industry
This paper presents an innovative framework developed to identify, analyze, and generate memorable experiences in the hotel industry. People prefer memorable experiences over traditional services or products in today’s ever-changing consumer world. As a result, the hospitality industry has shifted its focus toward creating unique and unforgettable experiences rather than just providing essential services. Despite the inherent subjectivity and difficulties in quantifying experiences, the quest to capture and understand these critical elements in the hospitality context has persisted. However, traditional methods have proven inadequate due to their reliance on objective surveys or limited social media data, resulting in a lack of diversity and potential bias. Our framework addresses these issues, offering a holistic solution that effectively identifies and extracts memorable experiences from online customer reviews, discerns trends on a monthly or yearly basis, and utilizes a local LLM to generate potential, unexplored experiences. As the first successfully deployed, fast, and accurate product of its kind in the industry, This framework significantly contributes to the hotel industry’s efforts to enhance services and create compelling, personalized experiences for its customers.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2141095
- PAR ID:
- 10487942
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE/ACM
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Hotel iIdustry, Memorable Experience, Keyword Extraction, Text Generation, Social Media Mining
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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