Background
The ECPAT acronym stands for 'End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes'. ECPAT has Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

ECPAT is a network of organisations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children. It seeks to encourage the world community to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights free from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation.

ECPAT International has a network in 50 countries all over the world. ECPAT International has invited government agencies and businesses related to the tourism industry, such as hotels and tour agencies, to join its activities. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is one agency that has agreed to help.

In April 2002, Sendrine Fabié, a representative of ECPAT, asked a representative of the TAT to consult with Fabrice Tessier, Vice President for Human Resources for the Asian Region for Accor Group (the group that manages Sofitel, Novotel, Le Meridien and Ibis hotels) about joining in the drive to fight child sex tourism.

ECPAT AND ACCOR PARTNERSHIP
Activities
Accor Group agreed to undertake the following activities to help in the campaign:

1. Joining ECPAT International/ Child Wise Tourism to educate and build
   awareness among managers and front desk workers of Novotel hotels in the “Preventing Child Abuse in Tourism Destinations” training session held on 9 September 2002 at the Novotel Siam Square Hotel, Soi 6, Siam Square.
   
   
2. Printing posters to inform hotel employees and guests about the issue. The
   posters were distributed to all hotels in the Accor Group in Thailand.

Accor Group’s participation in these activities demonstrates that it is a tourism-related business that cares about and is willing to help put an end to the problem of child sex tourism. Such social responsibility contributes to the long-term prosperity of the tourism sector in Thailand.

KEY ACTIONS
3 first points were initiated:

• Ethical Policy
  Program launched in 2002
  
  
• Providing information to travellers
  Campaign in France 2001 and Thailand 2002
  
  
• Training personnel
  The training programme started in October 2002. The training of staff is part of a global education program to develop capacity of the Accor personnel to prevent sexual exploitation of children.
  
  A presentation kit has been distributed to all Human Resources Manager and Training Manager in Thailand with support of ECPAT and Child Wise Tourism in order to train the trainer on how to deliver child wise style of training to hotel staff.
  
  Total number of Accor hotels staff having attended Child Wise Tourism Awareness training program form October 2002 to January 2003:
  1,422 out of a total of 3,711 hotel staff

ACCOR-ECPAT COUNTRY TRAINING

2003 – 2004
17 hotels in Cambodia and Thailand implemented Child Wise Awareness Training. So far 3,400 employees have completed the training module (about 70%).

In 2004, the project was extended to in Indonesia.
There are 14 hotels implement the training and about 1,100 (20%) Indonesian employees have completed the training so far.

During 2005-2007, Accor is working with Child Wise (ECPAT Australia) in order to expand the training (including updating and improving training module) to 20 additional hotels in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam.

The new programme has been implemented after Child Wise conducted a formal review of previous training materials and recognised the need for a complete overhaul. Subsequently, the training materials will be re-written and designed to be more practical and user-friendly for Asia.

INTENSIFIED CHILD WISE TOURISM TRAINING 2005 – 2007
This intensified Child Wise Tourism training program is supported by the Australian government for 2005-2007.

It will be expanded outside of Accor hotels to include 35 training workshops in seven Asian countries over the next two years.

These training workshops will be conducted in partnership with the government tourism authorities in each country and will target selected representatives from the tourism sector (hotel staff, tour guides, travel agents, taxi drivers, restaurant staff, etc).

2003
Accor organized the first walk so called ‘Walk for Children - Charity Walk’ and raised US$5,000 for Baan Huay Krai, Community Theatre Group project in Chiang Rai, Thailand that uses theatre to educate parents on the dangers of commercial sexual exploitation of children.

2004
Accor organized the second ‘Walk for Children- Charity Walk 2004’ and raised US$6,000 for ECPAT shelter project in Chiang Rai, Thailand.

The next ‘Walk for Children – Charity Walk’ is scheduled again for early 2006

ECPAT AND ACCOR PARTNERSHIP
BACKGROUND 2000 – 2002

	2000 Accor partners with French organization – Groupe Développement – Ecpat affiliate in France - and finances economic development programmes in Egypt, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Columbia, Romania.
	2001 Partnership is extended to supporting ECPAT in France, as the objective was to set-up corporate projects illustrating the group’s strategy for sustainable, equitable and responsible tourism. Accor participates to ECPAT’s “No Child Sex Tourism” campaign targeted at public opinion and tourists in France. 500 000 information leaflets were distributed with travel tickets, supplied through Accor Travel agencies (over 260) and 600 posters were displayed within these same agencies.
	2002 Accor in Asia reinforces partnership by working with ECPAT International based in Bangkok to develop activities in order to raise awareness and educate guests and employees: Information posters on sexual tourism and on the commitments of Accor to Ecpat and to the Tourism Office of Thailand are posted in the lobby and in the staff area of all hotels, Novotel, Sofitel and Mercure in Thailand. Accor Human Resources Department develops and implements with Ecpat and Child Wise Tourism a training and awareness program for hotel staff.
Accor’s Fabrice Tessier, Jean-Marc Loustalet with ECPAT’s Sendrine Fabié and Yanne Courcoux	2003 Accor in Asia signs ECPAT Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism, based on 6 criteria. Establish an ethical policy regarding commercial sexual exploitation of children Provide information to travelers by means of catalogues, brochures, web-sites, posters, etc Train the personnel in the country of company activities Introduce a clause in contracts with travel agents, tour operators and ground operators stating the common repudiation of commercial sexual exploitation of children Provide information to local official ‘key persons’ at the destination Report annually

All images Copyright Accor Asia