When Sandy Biback retired almost 10 years ago, she didn’t stop working. Instead, she immediately founded the nonprofit Meeting Planners Against Human Trafficking (MPAHT) and began speaking, writing, and educating — and she hasn’t stopped since.
Her new book, Travelogue of My Life: Overcoming, Thriving, a Living Legacy, explores her almost 37-year career as owner of Imagination+Meeting Planners and her journey building awareness about human trafficking.
It all started during a trip to Southeast Asia a decade ago when she saw signs about human trafficking in a hotel and discovered Daughters of Cambodia, a nonprofit focused on the sexual exploitation of young women and men.
That doesn’t happen where I live, she thought. But as she started researching, she found that more than 50 million people in the world live in some form of slavery.
“I just kept reading and the more I learned, the more I thought, ‘Oh my God.’”
She decided to hold a breakfast meeting on the topic for colleagues in the industry, and figured she would have no problem booking a meeting room since she knew so many people in the business.
“Well, I did have trouble. No one wanted it on their leaderboard or to say that it could even be happening in their hotels.”
On the Front Lines
The misconception that trafficking doesn’t happen in the same four- and five-star hotels where meetings take place continues today.
But that’s just one of the issues, Biback said. Another is signage. There are no laws in Canada that hotels must show signage making customers aware of human trafficking, and in the U.S., laws vary by state.
“In Canada, your five-star properties are doing things ad hoc. But it’s not the law.”
The issue has grown more mainstream, with celebrities like country artist Paul Brandt raising awareness. His organization, NotInMyCity, offers a free 25-minute online training program that educates people on how to spot and report the warning signs of trafficking.
However, Biback said activity in the meetings industry has slowed. She continues to speak at hospitality programs in Ontario colleges to educate the new generation of planners. Lizzy Low, assistant director of sales at Ottawa Tourism, has taken over the executive director role at MPAHT, which is now the Canadian representative for The Code (The Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism). The Code is managed by ECPAT International and currently counts 329 member companies across 42 countries.
What Meeting Planners Can Do
How can individual planners take action? For one, Biback suggests asking attendees to put the 24/7 human trafficking hotline numbers (see below) into their phones.
Many hotels are also still hesitant to post signage because it implies that trafficking is taking place there. “My response is, ‘No, you’re protecting your employees, your clients, and their registrants.’ You may not be seeing anything at your hotel, but there are still things you can do to let everyone know that you’re watching out for them,” she said.
“If I’m a meeting planner looking for space and I ask about a hotel’s human trafficking policies, and the salesperson doesn’t even respond to me or acts like it’s none of my business — and if everything else is equal with another venue that has policies in place and has trained its employees — that’s where I’ll go.”
To report suspicious behavior, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1 (888) 373-7888 in the U.S. and 1 (833) 900-1010 in Canada.
