TRUMP IN A SLUMP Brand suffering with polls

Posted on 08/18/2016 | About Уса, Russia

Mixing business and politics has always been a high-risk game, mixing a high profile brand and politics may be even riskier… just ask the Republican Presidential nominee.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure I have to say up front that Donald J. Trump (have you noticed how he likes to get that “J” into every introduction?) has never been someone for whom I have had anything but abhorrence. So if you are a true ‘TrumpFan’ you might want to consider reading no further. You may however want to consider the fact that, just as ‘The Donald’ likes to tell it as he sees it, I feel it only fair that I too can take the same approach.
As background, my views on Trump, the man and the brand, are not new. In the nineties I had several business encounters with him in New York so my opinions are first-hand and not based on third party rhetoric. My feelings about him and his brand are perhaps best demonstrated by a shopping trip way back in the last century – I think it was 1999.
A planned overnight business trip to San Francisco got extended to a second day so I needed to go buy myself a shirt for the next day’s meetings. Macy’s was just around the corner, so I dashed in, grabbed a shirt in my size and headed to checkout. It was only as the clerk started to ring up my purchase that I noticed the shirt I’d selected was labeled something like ‘The TRUMP Collection’. “Stop, I yelled. “I’m sorry but I can’t buy this. I’ll be right back.” Minutes later when I returned with an almost identical shirt by Polo or some such, the check out lady smiled and asked, “Trump eh? Not the first time it’s happened.”
So, fast forward 17 years and that brand is everywhere. Drive down the West Side Highway into New York City and you hit one section where about ten consecutive buildings have the TRUMP name above the door.
Drive from the city to JFK and it’s on a hospital wing in Queens. Drive across the Whitestone Bridge and where there used to be a landfill there is now a golf course with 20-foot high letters proclaiming to the world that this is the TRUMP LINKS.
But with every passing week as the world learns more about the man behind the brand, it seems a lot more people are reacting as I did in 1999. The fact that his shirts are made in Taiwan is but one small problem for the ‘Teflon Donald’ who flaunts the need to bring jobs back to the “USA … USA” - but it’s his beloved hotels and resorts that are really taking a hit.
According to Hipmunk.com, which tracks hotel industry booking trends, Trump Hotels’ reservations are down big time to the tune of an average 59 percent year-on-year. Before Trump’s excursion into politics, his hotels were quite popular, garnering 1.7 percent of all bookings on Hipmunk in major cities with Trump properties. By the end of the first quarter of this year, that had dropped all the way down to 0.7 percent.
In New York City and Las Vegas it was worse than the average with total bookings plunging 70 percent. Despite being the preferred stop for campaign events, The Trump Soho, New York was down 74 percent. The Trump International Las Vegas dropped 71 points and even The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto was down by 47 percent.
If Toronto is flagging, the newest Trump property in Canada, The Trump International Hotel and Tower Vancouver, hasn’t opened its doors as yet but has nevertheless managed to cause quite a ruckus.
As The Globe and Mail reported in May of this year, “Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and other civic leaders denounced Donald Trump for fostering what they see as racism and hatred. In December, Mr. Robertson urged the tower’s developer, Holborn Group, to dump the Trump name from the 63-storey building on West Georgia Street. ‘Donald Trump’s hateful positions and commentary remind us all of much darker times in our world’s past,’ the mayor wrote in a letter to Holborn president Joo Kim Tiah.”
For a man who loves to say, “there is no such thing as bad publicity” it’s going to be interesting to see how The Donald delegates the blame for these dramatic drops in his room nights: Probably, “the numbers have been rigged” but we shall see.
So can I tempt anyone for a weekend at the new ‘Conrad Black Hotel and Towers’?