Eric Danzinger said goal is to have hotels in 26 major American metropolitan areas, but a planned project in China is ‘pretty much off’

Donald Trump’s namesake hotel chain plans to triple its US presence, contradicting a pledge the president made in December that no new deals would be done by his organization during his time in office.

Trump's conflicts of interest: a visual guide Read more

Trump Hotels’ chief executive officer, Eric Danzinger, announced the US expansion at a trade conference on Tuesday.

“There are 26 major metropolitan areas in the US, and we’re in five,” Danziger said at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles, according to a Bloomberg report. “I don’t see any reason that we couldn’t be in all of them eventually.”

Danzinger said, however, that the company would not invest overseas. “Both brands and any others we create will have a domestic emphasis for the next four or eight years.”

Danzinger also said plans for a Chinese Trump hotel were “pretty much off”. The president has repeatedly criticized China for its acceptance of jobs offshored by American corporations, and has criticized American companies that manufacture goods there.

Trump Hotels will also open the first in its lower-range Scion line of hotels this year.

Trump shifted control of his hotel management business to his son Eric three days after being sworn into office, according to a Florida state filing. He may have been encouraged to do so by a ProPublica report documenting the lack of such a filing in any state where Trump does domestic business. ProPublica added to its story a list of resignations from some of his organizations signed by Trump on Monday.



Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Presidency. Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them. No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.

The plans to expand the president’s namesake hotel chain violate one of Trump’s promises from last year: “No new deals will be done during my term in office,” Trump tweeted in December.



Trump changed his promise after winning the election, appearing amid a mountain of file folders he claimed were part of the work his law firm was doing to separate him from his businesses. There would be “no new foreign deals whatsoever,” Trump attorney Sheri Dillon said, and domestic deals would require the approval of an independent ethics adviser. The adviser has not been named and there is no indication that he or she was consulted on the new hotels.

Donald Jr and Eric Trump will manage their father’s companies, despite having both served on their father’s transition team. The president is also likely to maintain regular contact with his children while in office.

Trump has been roundly criticized by ethics watchdogs on both sides of the aisle for his refusal to divest from his businesses and apparent plans to profit from the nation’s highest office.

Will Trump’s business plans avoid presidential conflicts of interest? Read more

The conflicts between Trump’s official duties and his business interests have no precedent in American politics, experts say. “Reagan spent some time in the private sector but he certainly wasn’t a CEO,” said Robert Lenhard, a former FEC chair appointed by George W Bush, in a November interview. “He wasn’t operating a set of companies like Trump is. Most of our presidents have come out of political careers – Eisenhower’s time out of office was mostly a hiatus between the military and the presidency.”

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization doubled the membership fee at its Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, to $200,000, beginning 1 January.