Hotels in front line as EC declares war on child-sex trade
Child-sex tourism is not confined to sleazy, back-street hotels, but can affect even the big international chains, say experts.
"It occurs everywhere," said Julia O'Connell Davidson, reader in sociology at Leicester University and a key speaker at a European Commission conference on combating child-sex tourism held last week in Brussels.
O'Connell Davidson, who has studied the problem on the ground in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, said it even happened in large, self-contained hotel resorts.
"A lot of the all-inclusives say, ‘It doesn't happen within our complex.' But the security guards are poorly paid and they can more or less double their weekly earnings by saying, ‘Slip me $10 and I'll let you take her in.'"
Helena Karlen, vice-chairperson of Ecpat, an international group dedicated to eliminating child prostitution, said a recent case in Poland illustrated the point. A Swedish businessman staying at a large hotel owned by a well-known international chain was spotted taking two young girls up to his room. The receptionist became suspicious and called the police. When they entered his room, they found him sexually abusing the two girls. Few receptionists or hotels would have the confidence to inform the police, said Karlen.
The growth in "apart-hotels" that rent out self-contained private suites was also proving a boon to paedophiles, said O'Connell Davidson. "If they know what they're doing is illegal and they are looking for very young children, apart-hotels are preferable."
Abusing children
But she argued that child-sex tourism was not just about paedophiles. Men travelling to exotic destinations to seek out ordinary prostitutes were often drawn into abusing children, knowingly or unknowingly, because many of the prostitutes were as young as 12.
And even where the abuse was not actually taking place on hotel premises, taxi drivers, bartenders and other hotel workers often helped sex tourists gain access to children, she said. "It's facilitated by people in the mainstream tourist industry."
Ken Hine, chief executive of the International Hotel & Restaurant Association (IH&RA), did not deny that the problem sometimes occurred in upmarket hotels, but said child abusers were more likely to seek out the anonymity of private apartments, back-street hotels and "safe houses".
He also thought that the problem of hotel workers facilitating prostitution, child or otherwise, had been largely eradicated by the industry, which had cracked down on it some years ago. "Does it happen? Sure. Is it prevalent? No," he claimed.
"But that doesn't mean we as an industry don't have a responsibility to take a leadership position to stamp out this blight," Hine added. In August, the IH&RA launched a worldwide campaign to make hotels aware of the problem and get them to take steps to combat it. Some groups were already taking initiatives of their own.
Pan Pacific Hotels is running a scheme in Bangkok, Thailand, whereby it takes young women from remote villages before they fall prey to the sex traders who lure them into prostitution. Instead, the women are taken to Bangkok, educated and trained for careers in the hotel and restaurant industry. Chains such as Sheraton, Hyatt and Regent International were following suit, said Hine.
Other hotels could soon be forced into action. Ecpat has drawn up a code of conduct for tour operators which obliges them to write into their contracts with accommodation suppliers a clause repudiating child-sex tourism.
Five tour operators in Scandinavia have already signed up and Ecpat hopes others across Europe will follow.
But this solution does not go far enough, some believe. O'Connell Davidson believes it cannot be stamped out unless the hotel industry tackles the problems of poverty wages and lack of career prospects for local workers.
And she argues that there should be a special tax levied on hotels and holidays in areas susceptible to child-sex tourism. This could be used to provide education, health care and training for local people.
She said: "You can't expect individual hotels to act on their own. There has to be a tax passed on to tourists. People shouldn't be able to go to the Dominican Republic for two weeks for £300. There's a hidden cost that's not being recognised."
By David Shrimpton
