Michael Dominguez joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how the hospitality industry can move beyond discomfort to become a powerful force in preventing human trafficking through intentional cultural change and staff empowerment.

Michael Dominguez

Michael Dominguez is the President and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International (ALHI), where he leads a global sales organization of nearly 80 professionals across 26 offices worldwide, serving as a trusted partner for meeting and event professionals seeking the best independent luxury properties and experiences. With over 30 years of experience in luxury meetings and events, Michael holds the Certified Hospitality Sales Executive (CHSE) credential and has earned multiple accolades for his leadership. He is an active and influential member of several industry associations, including serving as Past Chairman of Meeting Professionals International’s (MPI) International Board and co-chairing Meetings Mean Business. Michael has been recognized among the “Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry” and “50 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.” In 2025, he received the ASAE Global Association Visionary Award. Under his leadership, ALHI has become a leader in anti-trafficking efforts within the hospitality industry, earning the Freedom Award for their commitment to this cause.

Key Points

• The hospitality industry lost critical ground during the pandemic when hotels shifted to mobile check-in and bypassed front desks, which had been a primary checkpoint for identifying potential trafficking situations.


• Training hotel staff to recognize trafficking signs includes looking for unusual requests like multiple room keys, excessive towels and linens, extended “do not disturb” signs beyond 24 hours, and implementing wellness checks within that timeframe.


• Major hotel brands and management companies are now required to participate in American Hotel Lodging Association’s accredited training programs, though franchise owners and smaller independent properties remain gaps in universal coverage.


• Making people “uncomfortable for 10 minutes” at every opportunity is essential because the hospitality industry naturally avoids discussing difficult topics, yet this intentional discomfort drives cultural change and awareness.


• Personal storytelling that puts a human face to trafficking—such as sharing survivor Faith Ramos’s story—creates deeper impact than statistics alone and motivates 80% of people to ask how they can help.


• The “pounding the rock” philosophy from the San Antonio Spurs—asking daily “are we better today than yesterday?”—provides a framework for sustained, incremental progress in anti-trafficking efforts across the industry.


• Collaboration is expanding beyond hotels to include clients, electrical companies adding hotline information to service trucks, and organizations like the Aruna Project that employ survivors, demonstrating how every sector can play a position in the broader movement.


• AI technology offers hope for identifying trafficking patterns by analyzing unusual service requests and alerting staff to abnormal frequency of activities that might otherwise go unnoticed in large hotels.

Resources

• Episode 352 – Empowering Change: Holding Hotels Accountable for Trafficking


• Spurs Video – “A Beautiful Game”

Transcript

[00:00:00 ] Michael Dominguez: One thing I promised is, I promise you I’m gonna make people uncomfortable, at least for 10 minutes at every opportunity I can.

[00:00:06 ] Delaney Mininger: Every hotel is either part of the prevention network or a gap that traffickers exploit. And the signs are there, multiple room keys, extra towels, privacy signs that are up for days. And when COVID removed their front desk check-in, they lost their most important checkpoint.

[00:00:22 ] Leaders like Michael are showing us how to rebuild it and make it stronger. Hi, I’m Delaney Mininger, a student here at Vanguard University and I help produce the show. Our guest today is Michael Dominguez and he will be speaking with Sandra Morgan. Michael is the president and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International, the Freedom Award recipient, and he’s leading his industry’s fight against trafficking with intentional cultural change, and now here’s their conversation.

[00:00:56 ] Sandie Morgan: I am here with Michael Dominguez, president and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast.

[00:01:09 ] Michael Dominguez: Thank you so much, and thank you for the invite. It’s excited to be here.

[00:01:13 ] Sandie Morgan: Well, and people usually expect my experts to be from law enforcement, aftercare, prevention, but you are very unique. And the first time I met you, was on Zoom. We haven’t met in person, but we’re looking forward to making that happen. I saw the Spurs jersey in the background in your office, and can you tell me why that’s there? Cause it made so much sense to so much of what we’re doing.

[00:01:50 ] Michael Dominguez: Without a doubt. And, I’ve mentioned that, you know, first and foremost I was born and raised in San Antonio. So there’s the connection to the Spurs. But, the Spurs have been an organization that has been literally featured and studied around their culture. And the reason that matters is it’s, yeah, the basketball and what they’ve done on the court and their wins and their championships and the most winning franchise over a 30 year window.

[00:02:15 ] Yeah, all that matters. But the important part is their culture and their culture and how it’s built and how it’s maintained. You know, it’s amazing that they’ve been in the league over 50 years and they’ve only missed the playoffs nine times. Ever.

[00:02:30 ] Sandie Morgan: Wow.

[00:02:31 ] Michael Dominguez: And it’s that kind of measure of success that they’ll tell you the culture is special. They’re a small market team. You know, they’re not LA, they’re not New York, it’s San Antonio. And, and yet they’re so successful and their culture is all built around respect and people. You know, there’s a book that everybody that comes into our organization gets a book called, Culture Code by Daniel Coyle.

[00:02:55 ] And it’s in a, it’s a study of organizations that do culture really well and that are really unique and, you know, Navy Seal Team Six is in there, as well as about 30 pages dedicated to the San Antonio Spurs. And, and it talks about their culture and how it’s put together and how thoughtful everything is.

[00:03:15 ] Everybody who comes into our organization, they actually get a rock. And this rock has a story on it and it’s kind of our mantra and very much Sandie kind of applies to the work that is being done around trafficking. And the mantra is very simple and, I had the privilege of being able to go see their locker room.

[00:03:33 ] It’s the only thing in the Spurs locker room. The mantra is a story by a 1920s immigrant rights activist named Jacob Reese. The story simply says, when all hope fails, I think of a stone cutter hammering away at a stone more than a hundred times with no success. And on the hundred first strike, the stone splits, and I know it’s a hundred strikes before that split the stone.

[00:03:55 ] and the mantra of the Spurs is we’re just pounding the rock. The rock is our mantra here at ALHI and pounding the rock is a very simple way to live. Where are we better today than we are yesterday? And if we are, we hit another, we’ve hit the rock one more time. And when I say that’s perfect for the work we’re doing around trafficking, all we can do is continue to hit the rock.

[00:04:20 ] If we continue to hit the rock together, eventually that rock will split.

[00:04:24 ] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Well, this may be the shortest podcast ever. That was Drop the mic. That’s what will do. But seriously, after our last conversation, I got the book. I read the book and became your fan too. And so, I had never real, I think I’d heard the team name Spurs,

[00:04:46 ] Michael Dominguez: Yeah.

[00:04:47 ] Sandie Morgan: Then, Coach Popovich, his influence that inspires you, really I believe is something very transferable to our mission and our work to do prevention as well as identification and intervention. So.

[00:05:08 ] Michael Dominguez: I could not agree with you more, and you know, just as if you’re gonna build a great culture, it has to be intentional around your leadership. I believe the work around here has to be intentional. It has to be pervasive. It has to be intentional, it has to be every day. And that’s something that, you know, we’ve really grown as an organization.

[00:05:27 ] And you know, what I was proud of, you know, proud of is that this was the piece I wanted to focus on as an organization. ’cause I was very passionate around it, where I was excited as it started with a team of six. That was our committee to kind of figure out how we’re gonna drive this initiative through our organization and how we’re gonna start to live and breathe awareness around human trafficking and what we can do.

[00:05:51 ] And then where I’m most proud is the entire organization has embraced it. And what I think is really interesting as a sales organization, they’ve embraced it even further because they figure, they know how much it resonates with our client base. Now that’s not why we do it. But for our clients to understand, you know, Sandie, I just came back from our largest show in our industry.