The Trump Organization, which for years focused on high-end, luxury real estate, on Tuesday announced a new foray into the domestic hotel market with a chain of middle-of-the-range hotels.
The venture was inspired by travels by the Trump children on father Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign last year, when they were introduced to lackluster hotels in the US hinterland, The New York Times reported.
The new line will be called American Idea and three agreements have been signed for properties in the Mississippi Delta area, announced Trump Hotels, which is part of The Trump Organization.
“American Idea hotels will be an alternative, for both guests and hotel developers, looking for an answer to the run-of-the-mill offerings currently in the midscale space,” Trump Hotels announced.
“Guests will enjoy local flavor and genuine service in an environment that pays respect to the unique culture of each destination,” it added.
The New York Times reported that during the campaign, the Trump children would report back about thousands of supporters attending rallies and what they saw as a chance to build a line of hotels standing out from standardized options.
“I said, ‘That’s brilliant,'” Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger told the newspaper. “The reality is we should have something in those kinds of locations.”
Mississippi, the southern state where the first hotels are slated to open, voted for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of nearly 18 percent.
But Danziger rejected the idea that the electoral map would become a blueprint for picking future locations, the Times reported.
“There is no political thought to it,” Danziger was quoted as saying by the newspaper, adding that there could be “many hundreds” of American Idea hotels in both Republican and Democratic voting areas.
The Trump Organization is run by the president’s adult sons, but the commander-in-chief refused to divest fully from the firm, coming under fire from political opponents and ethics experts.
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