"Hotels should 'trust their gut' and report child exploitation"

Kent Police have told us that hotels should 'trust their gut' when it comes to reporting child sexual exploitation.

Operation Make Safe is national initiative designed to raise awareness and prevent child sexual exploitation in the hospitality industry.

And in Kent, police have been contacting hotels to arrange training session and test purchase them.

This is when officers go in as a 'parent' to a hotel along with a 'young person' and try a book a room on the spot, making it obvious to the hotel that something isn't quite right and Glen Rickersey, of Kent Police said: "The young person will be there, dressed quite young, maybe with a bottle of open alcohol and generally just not engaging with their 'adult' and the hotel staff.

"The idea is that the hotel will then challenge the situation, asking questions about it and use tactics to make the child feel more safe and therefore giving them more confidence if they ever come across a real situation of child sexual exploitation."

Becky Hills also works on the programme, she said: "It's about making sure we come at this from a preventative and educational point of view and not looking at this as a robust operation where we are prosecuting people, we just want to work with hotels and their staff to educate them.

"Unfortunately, we are only ever going to know about the details that are reported to us, and that sometimes comes from staff but it also comes weeks, months or years later from victims themselves so it's hard to say how prevalent this issue is in Kent at the moment.

On how hotels can spot child sexual exploitation, Becky said: "We would be looking for those ad hoc bookings such as walk in where they are trying to circumvent a hotel policy of booking online, people who don't want to provide you with identification or want to pay with cash instead of card."