Virginia hotel staff must take human trafficking awareness training

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Hotel workers across Virginia are now required to take a training course to spot human trafficking, after a new law went into effect on July 1.

The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services created the free online course, and now every two years all hotel staff will have to be recertified.

Delegate Shelly Simonds (D-Newport News) has been pushing for this bill since she was elected in 2012.

“I have daughters and I'm a former teacher. I know how entrapped, especially women can get, there are so many dangers out there in terms of drug addiction and [sexual] coercion can happen. We just need to make sure everyone in the community knows the plays and knows the ploys that these traffickers and these dangerous people are using on our young people.”

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Simonds said awareness advocates, hotel chains and lawmakers all worked together to pass this law and create human trafficking awareness training for all hotel staff.

“It really takes a village to fight this kind of evil. I want everybody to be empowered and I want the staff to know who to call and what to look for,” she said.

The president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association, which represents 77 hotels in the city, commends lawmakers for signing the training into law.

“Human trafficking happens everywhere, when you get in the resort areas and vacation destinations, unfortunately that happens a little more frequently,” said John Zirkle Jr.

“Tourists are coming here because they want to have a great time. We want to provide a great time for them, as long as it's legal. Human trafficking is illegal [and] it's abusive,” Zirkle said.

Major hotel chains like Hilton and Marriott already had the training, but now it's required for smaller hotels and motels.

“Sometimes if they go to a smaller hotel that has only one person working at the front desk or not as many security presence cameras, that is an easy target for them to bring people in,” he explains. “Through this training, smaller hotels, while they may not have the cameras and the extra security. They'll have the people trained in what to look for, then they can alert management or the police, if they see something suspicious going on.”

Simonds hopes law enforcement and retail workers will also take the training next.

“It's a really important issue for our region in Hampton Roads because we've got the ports, we've got military bases, we've got lots of tourism, airports and major highways going through our region. Law enforcement has told us for a long time that human trafficking is happening all around us,” Simonds says.