Amateur golfers lined up at Trump National Doral near Miami on Thursday, agreeing to pay more than $9,000 each to play a friendly round with the world's top pros.
Resort hotel rooms will be filled with fans when a professional tournament featuring some of the biggest names in sports begins on Friday. The resort's restaurants and bars will attract more business, and Trump's name will be broadcast all over the world on television and the Internet.
The surge in business at one of former President Donald J. Trump's properties is due to his contract to host tournaments for LIV Golf, an upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.
LIV's willingness to pay for Trump to host a tournament at his resort, even as he seeks the presidency again, is another indication of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the Trump family. As just one example, this arrangement continues to generate conflicts of unprecedented size and scope. To Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump recently met with Saudi Arabia's leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to two people briefed on the talks. The Biden administration is working on a Middle East peace plan with Saudi Arabia. It is not clear what Mr. Trump and the Saudi leader discussed. Representatives for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
At the same time, an investment firm set up by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner with $2 billion from the same Saudi sovereign wealth fund that funds the LIV Golf League is seeking to do business with the United States. It's accelerating. in the United States and abroad in recent months.
The Trump family's relationship with the Saudi government has raised questions not only by Trump's desire to return to the White House, but also by its intersection with the evolving nature of Trump's business, which was once closely tied to inner cities. ing. There is also a hotel, but the focus is now more and more on golf.
As of late last year, the Trump Organization had sold or lost brand deals with six hotels around the world, most recently Trump Waikiki in Hawaii and the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Other hotels bearing Trump's name are in Vancouver, Toronto, Panama and New York City's Soho district, with a total of 1,893 rooms.
This leaves the Trump family with just three city center hotels in New York, Chicago and Las Vegas.
The rest of the hospitality industry around the world, including Doral in Florida, is built almost entirely around golf courses. Over the past three years, his international status has increased as a result of his LIV golf tournament, which has been heavily funded by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund to attract top stars such as Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka. Enhanced.
Eric Trump, one of the former president's sons, said in an interview that changes in the company's hospitality industry holdings reflect rapid growth in the golf industry since the pandemic, a trend that has led to the family's 11 domestic golf He said it has benefited the club and four overseas golf clubs. .
“The leisure market is the hottest market in the hotel world,” he said, referring specifically to golf resorts. “The golf club is full.”
But the slump in the downtown hotel business was clearly not planned by the Trump family. Ten years ago, the family launched a national marketing campaign to grow what they then called the Trump Hotel Collection, a chain of boutique hotels in cities across North America and around the world. It has also launched its own frequent visitor program called Trump Card.
“Our lifestyle allows us to do more, experience more, and live life without boundaries, limits, or compromises,” the company boasts in its marketing campaign, which features Trump's name stripped off. We have listed many of the hotel properties.
At the time, the Trump family hired prominent hotel industry executive Eric Danziger to help with a massive expansion plan for the brand, predicting it would eventually include dozens of hotels around the world. . However, Danziger left the company after effectively canceling the Grand Hotel's expansion plans.
Documents prepared for the Trump family and their lenders offer a unique explanation for the decline of the downtown hotel brand, pointing the finger at Trump himself.
A 2021 evaluation of Doral Hotel prepared for Deutsche Bank, one of Mr. Trump's lenders, states: “According to management, the Trump brand is having a negative impact on the Company's financial performance.” It has been stated.
“Mr. Trump is a polarizing figure who evokes strong emotions from both his supporters and those of his political opponents,” the assessment added. “As a result, many groups have canceled events at their facilities.”
The appraisal, marked “confidential,” was made public late last year as part of court proceedings in New York, where Mr. Trump was accused in a civil lawsuit by the state's attorney general of inflating the value of some of his assets.
A second valuation report prepared for Doral in 2022 (also recently made public through a New York lawsuit) states that if the Trump family sells the hotel, the new management will have to pay for occupancy and average daily room rates. We concluded that we can expect a jump almost immediately.
The problem has spread to other Trump hotels as well.
Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago's average occupancy rate for the year ending September 2023 is just 49%, 15% lower than competing hotels in Chicago, according to market research prepared for the Trump Organization. Points were low.
Chicago hotel data released to the New York Times in response to a public records request by local tax assessors shows Trump Hotels' biggest weakness compared to its competitors is its large group sales This also shows that companies and other organizations are making profits. Avoid Trump family hotels.
Further complicating Trump Hotels' business plans is a long list of canceled or delayed projects, including Trump-branded hotels in Dubai, New Orleans, the Dominican Republic and two in Indonesia. Plans to launch two new hotel chains in the United States, to be called Scion and American Idea, were abandoned while Trump was in the White House.
One of the few new international resort projects currently progressing rapidly is in Oman, backed by a Saudi-based real estate company.
The 14-year-old, 462-room Trump Hotel in Hawaii dropped the Trump brand in November. At the New York trial, Donald Trump Jr. was asked about the decision, and one of the state's attorneys asked, “Isn't this a sign that hotels are ditching the Trump brand in favor of Hilton?” Trump responded, “I guess that's what they're doing.”
By contrast, Trump's golf courses in Jupiter, Fla., Northern Virginia, West Palm Beach, Fla., and Charlotte, North Carolina, among others, have seen significant increases in net income in recent years, court records show. In addition to food and beverage sales at Miami's Doral, golf revenue also skyrocketed.
Eric Trump says membership fees at two Trump golf clubs in Florida have soared to $400,000, and annual membership fees are now higher.
This surge in golf revenue in Bedminster and Doral coincides with LIV Golf's decision to begin hosting tournaments at the Trump venue three years ago. Attracting professional golf has long been a goal of the former president, but there has been little pushback from major professional golf organizations, including the PGA of America, which canceled a tournament scheduled for Bedminster in the wake of the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It has been ignored.
Trump himself announced the news of this year's Doral tournament, writing in a December post on Truth Social, “TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL in Miami has just signed a contract with LIV GOLF to host a championship tournament in April 2024. ” he wrote. The league held three tournaments last year at Trump courses in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia, more than any other golf course brand in the world.
Trump Organization executives said the direct payments from LIV Golf were relatively small, just enough to cover the costs of hosting the tournament and related renovations to the golf course and facilities. LIV Golf itself plans to award $25 million in prize money to 54 professional players.
“They want to use my real estate because it's the best real estate,” Trump said at the LIV tournament held at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington last May. He said the payment was “peanuts to me.”
But the indirect income for the Trump family could be significant. It's on display in Doral this week, and hotel occupancy rates are up significantly. When reporters visited his 643-room hotel, Doral, just a week ago, its conference rooms and restaurant were relatively quiet, even during Florida's busy spring break period. Eric Trump said he expects tens of thousands of golf fans to visit his resort in Doral over the weekend.
Asking prices for hotel rooms in Doral more than doubled as the tournament approached, reaching nearly $1,000 a night for a basic room.
Private chalets to watch the tournament will be rented for up to $89,000 for the three-day event. Meanwhile, you can secure a spot at the so-called Birdie Shack on the 16th green for $249, including three drinks and music played by his DJ.
Senegalese-American singer Akon will also hold a concert sponsored by LIV at the golf resort on Saturday, drawing a larger crowd to spend time at the resort. And the tournament will be broadcast on the CW network, which will at least bring additional brand attention to the club.
Both the Trump Organization and LIV Golf declined to say what percentage of these revenues the Trump family would receive or what other payments they would receive. A spokesperson for LIV said only that the arrangement with the Trump family was “on par with other venues in the United States.”
Spokesman Doug Mayer also denied suggestions that LIV chose the Trump family's venue as some kind of political favor by the Saudi government. Instead, the “championship-level” quality of Mr. Trump's golf courses, the speed with which private owners the Trump family approved the use of the golf courses by LIV, and how professional golfers in other parts of the U.S. cites resistance.
“LIV Golf is an independent business and commercial entity focused solely on the game of golf, the business of golf, and increasing competition in the global marketplace,” he said in a statement. “The League's mission has always been very clear. Any suggestions otherwise are not new and have repeatedly proven to be meaningless.”
The Trump family recently secured the rights from local city officials to build as many as five high-rise buildings at the Trump Doral Resort, including a total of 1,410 condominiums and vacation homes. The approval has already increased the resale value of the Doral holdings for the Trump family, despite relatively low occupancy rates at the hotel itself. However, there is no start date yet.
Eric Trump dismissed any suggestion that the Trump family would have difficulty obtaining bank financing to build the project, given the various legal issues.
“If the market is right and our mood is right, we will move forward,” he said.
Maggie Haberman Contribute to the report from New York, Jonathan Swan from washington alan blinder Originally from Atlanta.