Donald Trump’s floundering casinos and hotels do not cater to his supporters’ demographics and Trump TV’s plan will shift without the main hosts, experts say

The Trump brand now comes with a presidential seal affixed to it.



Donald Trump won the presidency after a campaign in which he was ridiculed, then admired, then feared for his unparalleled ability to tap into the American id. But while his special appeal to white, older American men won him the White House, it is not a relationship much prized by corporate America and scrutiny of his business practices have hung out a warning sign for future collaborators.

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It’s still unclear exactly what Trump will do with his businesses while in office. He will not be able to manage them himself. For whoever takes over, the question now is whether his newfound followers are numerous enough to sustain a change in his companies’ position and whether his pre-election customers have dumped him for good.

After his win on Tuesday, there are certainly millions of Trump followers who represent a formidable base from which to grow his business. But this campaign, the ugliest in living memory, has also left Trump facing some big problems.

Trump on TV

Trump proved a contender uniquely suited to an age when a presidential candidate can run much of his campaign on social media. His Twitter feed alone generated blanket TV coverage and a million think pieces. A new career as a news media mogul seemed to be beckoning if he lost, Trump even teasingly called some of his Facebook Live feeds “Trump TV”.

With Trump as sitting president, a TV network with him at the helm is no longer a credible option, but Trump’s campaign staff includes Brietbart’s Steve Bannon, who oversaw the site’s transformation into a white rights-focused digital media outlet. Bannon’s presence on the campaign is an unprecedented association between media owner and sitting president, and likely to be a major boon for Breitbart and his megaphone.

Trump’s demographics skew toward older people, who aren’t considered as valuable to advertisers. And the white nationalists who vocally supported him are toxic to advertisers concerned with changing demographics, which is most of the market’s blue-chip companies, said Sharon O’Sullivan, a seasoned ad executive who has overseen sales at several Discovery Communications’ networks. But if that part of his audience would be a hard sell to major brands, their sheer volume might be able to overcome the associated distaste.

Underestimating the attraction of rightwing media brands is practically a tradition, O’Sullivan told the Guardian. “You’d have said Rush Limbaugh would never get a sponsor, but he has,” she said. “With ratings comes forgiveness.”

Trump casinos and hotels

Trump’s calling card, especially at his hotels and resorts, has always been opulence. Whether or not that opulence was in good taste was beside the point – the name Trump has always signalled heedless wealth. But no longer, according to Peter Shankman, a customer service consultant who has worked with companies including Disney World. “These are not people who are primarily in anyone’s focus group,” said Shankman, echoing the surprise across polls at Trump’s victory. “The question is ‘Who’s your audience now?’ The people he’s been pandering to could never afford to stay at Trump hotels; they could never afford to live at Trump Plaza.”

Foot traffic is down by 17% year-over-year at Trump’s casinos according to an analysis by location-tracking app Foursquare. Travel and booking site Hipmunk found that bookings at Trump-owned hotels were down by 59% year-over-year. Though some of may be due to management distraction during the campaign, as high-paying corporate customers and wealthy pleasure-seekers have been put off the brand.

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Trump’s latest hotel opening in Washington, a short walk from the White House, has been troubled. The hotel was advertising significant discounts during the last International Monetary Fund meeting, usually a great week for DC hotels.

Will a win revive his fortunes? That depends on how he behaves. His boorish campaign proved a major blow to this wing of his empire.

The Trump brand itself



There’s no arguing that people feel passionately about Donald Trump. Brand metrics like “likability” and “trust” are important to maintain when you’re trying to sell yourself to prospective advertisers, said Tim Nudd, creative editor at advertising trade Adweek, where he writes about branding and corporate perception. But they’re not ultimately important.

“Likability and trust are pretty hard to maintain when you’re saying nasty things and lying a lot,” Nudd said. “I think there’s no doubt that the brand has suffered a lot. One silver lining is that likability has not been at the core of the Trump brand. Weirdly enough it’s been more about product quality, however fake that quality has been.”

Trump’s audience is huge, Shankman said, but it’s not an audience of people he spent any time trying to reach before he ran for office. Smaller, lower-cost to the consumer businesses might fare well with the Trump name, Shankman observed, but the closest the Trump name has ever been to the working class is at Macy’s, and Macy’s dumped him over racist invective more than a year ago.

Shankman was blunt in his assessment: “He has spent the past year being this man for the forgotten people, and the forgotten people never bought his products before.”

But Trump has been frank about how seriously he considers self-interest a virtue. When accused by Clinton of exercising tax loopholes, Trump frankly replied, “That makes me smart.” As president, he would be in a position to propose legislation and appointees with an eye toward making his own businesses more profitable.

Disclosure: the author worked at Adweek before joining the Guardian