Some years ago, End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT), an international and domestic NGO that opposes the trafficking of children for commercial sex, initiated an anti-trafficking ethical code of conduct for hotels. St Louis event planner Kimberly Ritter is now using ECPAT's work as a basis for her anti-trafficking activism in St. Louis. Ritter looks at online photos in which young women are pimped for sexual use on websites such as
backpage.com. Ritter then looks carefully at the furniture and curtain patterns in the room, sometimes identifying the hotel where the photo was taken. She plans to ask all hotels that her event planning agency does business with, to sign an anti-trafficking code of conduct. She sometimes shows hotel managers the photos, saying "I can buy a girl in one of your rooms." Meeting planners, who note that there are 3.6 million people staying in U.S. hotels nightly, are increasingly putting anti-trafficking language in their proposals.
