foreign ERS and welcome to a gaming America huddle I'm Tim Paul and I'm here with Paul palazzari vice president global social responsibility at Hard Rock Paul thank you very much for joining me thank you Tim glad to be here yeah really happy to have you on um as your title suggests you know there's a lot about CSR we're going to talk about responsibility campaigns that kind of thing um a little bit like we were just maybe chatting a bit more before this interview off camera um these by definition are are good things you know good things that the industry does and it's always great to kind of shine a light on them yeah for sure and in terms of hard rock um our company is actually founded on four mottos that really are sort of touchstones for everybody and the models are love all Servall all is one take time to be kind and save the planet and they really do inform uh everything we do and they they uh people rally around them obviously your role is is is heavily involved in this can you tell us um a little bit about your day-to-day your role and uh you know the company's overall which you've already touched on kind of approach to social responsibility yeah you know I have a very um exciting job I get to serve all of our business verticals which are cafes hotels and casinos uh globally and I get to work with a great team here so I personally lead three operational programs uh one is responsible gambling which we call Player's Edge um our environmental sustainability program which we call save the planet and our anti-human trafficking uh initiatives which involve both operational programs and lots of public engagement this kind of thing so so ESG um and kind of a social governance things like diversity quality inclusion as well they're becoming more and more important and and perhaps not not in a cynical way but even companies are seeing kind of share prices um affected by investors are kind of more interested in these kind of things um how does it impact Hard Rock's overall strategy so how much of a of a part does you know the responsibility and what you're working on uh how much of a part is it playing that in everything that the company does it is an increasing part of who we are and what people are seeking the important thing that's going on now are that you have um our guests and the people we serve our employees and uh the markets and development Partners who want to know who you are and you can't fake it anymore um and not that we ever did but you're seeing a lot of attention to greenwashing and woke washing that's never been who we are and you need you need to have proof points so uh We've also uh invested heavily in diversity equity and inclusion in fact my boss is our chief diversity officer um and I think the critical thing for this moment is um it's not just doing good things it's how you do them and doing them in a way that is effective that can measure impact and outcomes where possible um and where you're really integrating into your guest experience and in the experience that your team members have and those are really the areas of focus that that we take whether it's environmental sustainability or human trafficking or diversity Equity inclusion or or philanthropy so you've touched on a couple of specific examples so far and and we'll talk about some uh certainly the the anti-human trafficking that you mentioned that's quite recent for Hard Rock we'll talk about that a little bit in more detail later on but in terms of your your campaigns at the moment and the things that the projects you're working on which ones are sort of front front of mind and really at the top of the list for Hard Rock right now yeah I mean they all are but I think right at this moment given that we're talking in January and it is anti-human trafficking uh awareness month that that's a program that is um uh been introduced over the last couple of years and it's it's a critical priority for us and you know the thing I think there's a moment going on with this issue globally certainly here in the U.S but um but globally everyone's more aware of it and I think it's getting more attention which is great for our industry the important thing for us is to acknowledge that it's an issue that hits the whole hospitality industry particularly hotels and casinos and that we have a role to play and that we need to Define that role and we need to partner with the right organizations in order to help protect our guests and Safeguard them and also to bring awareness to the issue and try to help prevent it so those are some of the things that that have been really top of mind and taking a lot of my time and it's um it's uh great work absolutely and and you know you mentioned the the the program that you guys are embarking up upon the American gaming Association recently they launched a toolkit for sort of gambling companies and operators and it's interesting obviously you mentioned that the hospitality industry more widely is affected um in terms of gambling companies and as you say kind of hospitality hotels how much of an issue is this uh you know for for operators and and the brands out there for for hotels and casinos it is there is always a chance that someone is going to try to use your property um to to apply this horrible trade it's just a reality um and and no company is exempt from it but uh and I'm glad you mentioned the American gaming Association I actually sit on the task force for human trafficking um with the AGA and led by Alice Costello who's doing a great job um and so I think so acknowledging that any company is at risk for this is the first thing but then what can we do to help prevent it and to mitigate it and yeah and some of the things that that we're working on we've just launched this month for um human trafficking Awareness Month in the U.S a QR uh code sticker which I'll actually show it to you here is a prop this little two by two inch sticker is um we are piling this at four of our hotels and casinos this sticker is for potential victims who are on site so should so direct support for victims needs used to be a bigger priority for the industry this initiative should we're putting in places like washrooms like the back stalls um in elevator areas parking garages places where if a victim were on property and they were to see this they'd be able to swipe their phone and they then can get help immediately for local law enforcement and so we're piloting this at our New York Hotel our Cincinnati casino our Hollywood Guitar hotel casino here in Florida as well as in Madrid and Spain and so we're going to test this pilot and uh we're planning to roll this out across all of our hotel and casino property so that's one example of how we can provide direct supports to victims who may be on our properties yeah no thank you very much for the for the very specific example and and yeah you can see the kind of the element of I guess discretion and urgency in the in the QR code um like so that's a specific example in terms of the industry and gambling companies um overall what more can be done to kind of help in this area is is there more awareness needs to be raised you know which areas can we kind of look to maybe improve on in 2023 and beyond that yeah it's a great question Tim so I will uh we have to improve um our ability to deal with it in operations and so that means engaging team members so training we have a core half an hour train that goes to all Casino and Hotel members team members we reinforce that with uh videos throughout the year that are short that are maybe maybe two three minutes long but hit the main points and we want our team members to be able to recognize um potential signs that trafficking is occurring on the property and know what to do if that's the case which is really informed security and Security will make a determination on whether to call law enforcement so that awareness and actually taking a very uncomfortable issue and making it um making uh letting our team members know we can do something about it so taking the discomfort out of it and turning that into action that's a key thing we also um can work at prevention so hard rock we had a very successful program that we did in 2022 called the social identity Quest and this is a an education module for high school students we partnered with ekpat USA to create this education module That Was Then adopted by High School teachers across the United States what this uh program is doing is trying to prevent luring online so increasingly traffickers are trying to lure vulnerable youth online and so it's about safety how to keep yourself safe but we did in a highly engaging way and we saw 1.2 million high school students in the U.S complete this curriculum and it's between half an hour or an hour and a half depending on how a high school teacher wants to teach it and we saw Online safety literacy increased by 13 so that kind of prevention effort is I think equally critical to trying to mitigate the issue on our properties yeah I mean it demonstrates just just the the wide scope of I guess the problem that uh you know you think you go into a hotel um what's top of their agenda you know the casino tables how clean the rooms are but you know issues like this you know what I mean it's um maybe it's not the first thing you think of but it's it's always a risk it's a big a wide reaching problem yeah and I'm glad you brought that up Tim because dealing with we obviously all of everyone in our industry invests heavily in guest experience we want our guests to have a great time we want them to feel good and um one of the one of the things we need to just get right when we're dealing with these issues is how do you if there's any guests facing communication if they're going to see something let's let's um if they're going to see Communications from us the tone has to be right but we still have to get the point across and so that's um and but I think again as an industry we need to be uh have the maturity to say this is an issue and we're doing something about it um that's more important to me than the discomfort of um of not addressing it at all yeah actually you know it's it's great to hear the work you guys are doing and and obviously even perhaps know what we're talking about we're we're shining more of a light on it and that's that's certainly what we what we more broadly need to be doing more of and and you know helping um I wanted to ask you a couple more questions from me yeah um Step slightly aside from this topic and not to downplay it at all but I did want to ask you about kind of the Hard Rock's pinktober campaign as well because every year we we see we see the press releases from you guys and the numbers in a very good way of going up you know the the totals raised are you know always increasing and I just wanted to kind of hear more from your on that campaign and what kind of things you've been achieving yeah thanks for asking about it we're very proud of that um campaign we've been doing it for 20 years um and pinktober actually is a is a trademark program for us and so we've uh yeah to your point about the money we've raised we've raised over a mill over 11 million dollars over the last 20 years and it just keeps getting better every year last year we raised close to one million dollars and so one of the I think pingtober is a great example because it really shows what Hard Rock does well we integrate a campaign like that where we're raising funds for uh research to help address breast cancer and to support uh survivors and uh well who who are dealing with breast cancer um and we integrated into our guest experiences so we're not just cutting a check we actually spend uh the month of September um creating great guest Activation so last year we partnered with a um a world-class chef chef Dominique kren who um who created uh and she's a breast cancer survivor herself she created a sort of signature disc for us it was a Baja style shrimp taco that we made available at our Cafe locations she did some curated yeah yeah they were yeah they were very good I heard I hadn't tried myself but I heard they were amazing um and she also curated some some especially dinners at our Hollywood uh Casino Hotel in our uh Hotel in New York City and we sell our world famous merchandise uh that's pinktober themed uh that helps us raise money for it we also uh partnered with a songwriter and musical performer named David Corey and we did a music a songwriting contest where we encouraged people to send lyrics uh related to to addressing breast cancer and he wrote a song about that and we we awarded a prize to to a winner and we also do activations at all our cafes at our hotels we dress the rooms in pink and we give lots of opportunities for our guests to support our efforts and it's a global effort we do it across all of our businesses across all the countries that we that we're operating in yeah it sounds like a wonderful initiative and uh really pleased to hear the um I mean you mentioned you've raised over 11 million but I think I think in October of this year that month alone was I think it hit a million yeah we did yeah we hit a million yeah yeah so so that's yeah that shows you that they're going absolutely the right direction um a final question I wanted to ask is that obviously we talked about some great initiatives so far just wanted to ask uh what we wonder is there anything new in the pipeline for Hard Rock in terms of new initiatives this year or you know it may well be the case that you're reinforcing the focus on some existing ones but if there are some new projects it'd be great to hear about them yeah no thank you so we're going to be uh releasing our social responsibility report very shortly within the next uh month or so it will be um we'll be live on our site and uh we're very excited about that we're going to be uh taking some of the pilot initiatives I mentioned um that QR code we're going to be hopefully assessing that pilot and expanding it to all our properties we're also we've also launched um a program to help bridge homeless youth uh into jobs with hard rock so it's a job transition program we work with covenant house we're piloting that in New York City Covenant House is a shelter for homeless Youth and about 40 percent of homeless youth experiencing trapping at some some point in time so we're not just giving them a job we're giving them the chance to build a career in hospitality and and live within the Hard Rock family so we want to be expanding that across different locations where there's a covenant house and there's also a hard rock operation we're going to be expanding our state of the planet efforts doing um great guest activations to raise awareness and to talk about the things we are doing to um to address the planet we have our first design standard sustainable build design standard that we're rolling out so as we look at exciting development properties around the world we'll be applying that standard um and then uh continue to work with the American gaming Association on um on anti-human trafficking working with them to try to help create a standardized training uh program that that can help all casinos and online gaming operators in this space for to deal with human trafficking um well Paul thank you very much for for joining us really great to speak with you and Shine the Light on you know it's nice when when an interview is different and this is certainly different we're talking about genuinely good causes and it's just great to hear what hard rocks work so good luck with everything for the rest of the year and I hope for all your new new and existing initiatives you know continue to to succeed thanks Tim it was great talking with you thanks for the invitation thank you very much