Expanding Our Efforts To Combat Human Trafficking

Since 2018, Airbnb has proudly partnered with Polaris–a leading anti-trafficking organization and operator of the US Human Trafficking Hotline–to combine their world-renowned expertise with the innovation and scale of the sharing economy to take a modern approach to preventing modern slavery. 

Today, we are excited to announce Airbnb and Polaris are expanding this partnership to bolster these efforts around the globe. 

In 2020, we are redoubling our work together through an expanded partnership to broaden our training to hosts, guests, and additional Airbnb employees. For hosts and guests, we will work with Polaris to develop both in-person and virtual training to help our community understand how trafficking happens and what might be cause for concern, as well as action steps to report suspected trafficking. We’ll also be updating our employee training to include our global Customer Support hubs, our engineering teams and local employees that interact directly with our user community. Newly developed curriculum will be tailored to support our global expansion and ensure meaningful impact. 

“Human trafficking is an incredibly complex issue that does not lend itself to quick and easy answers. The depth of Airbnb’s commitment is exactly what is necessary to make a real dent in the scope of this global tragedy”

Nancy McGuire Choi, CEO of Polaris

Through this partnership, we’ve worked together with Polaris on a number of key initiatives, including:

• Establishing a robust training curriculum for Airbnb’s customer support agents and crisis managers to assist the identification of possible signs of exploitation and improve the reporting of potential trafficking.
• Developing smart protocols to share our learnings and support our cooperation with law enforcement. 
• Designing new methods to better flag possible exploitation on Airbnb before it happens, while still respecting and maintaining the privacy of hosts and guests. 
• Convening a range of companies and local anti-human trafficking experts to explore new areas of collaboration to strengthen the private sector’s efforts in combating trafficking. 

There is still more work to be done. Exploitation and trafficking are still all too common in today’s society, but we are eager to use our global reach to help assist in the effort to end it once and for all. Such cruelty runs counter to the open and welcoming society we deeply believe in at Airbnb, and we look forward to continuing our work with Polaris to make travel safer for everyone. 

About Polaris

Named after the North Star, an historical symbol of freedom, Polaris works to reshape the systems that make sex and labor trafficking possible and profitable in North America. For more than a decade, Polaris has assisted thousands of victims and survivors through the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline and built the largest known U.S. data set on the crime. With the guidance of survivors, and working with public and private-sector partners, we use that data to understand and improve the way trafficking is identified, how victims and survivors are assisted, and how we can prevent this abuse at the scale of the problem – 25 million people worldwide robbed of the basic right to choose how they live and work. 

About The US Human Trafficking Hotline

The US Human Trafficking Hotline is a 24/7 confidential service that connects victims and survivors of sex and labor trafficking with services and supports to get help and stay safe. The TraffickingHotline also receives tips about potential situations of sex and labor trafficking and facilitates reporting that information to the appropriate authorities in certain cases.

The toll-free phone and SMS text lines and live online chat function are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Help is available in English or Spanish, or in more than 200 additional languages through an on-call interpreter.