Trump Hotels CEO Interview: With International Expansion off the Table, Domestic Growth Gets Full Focus
Photo Credit: Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger wants to emphasize his company's growth and expansion, while maintaining its distinction from Trump the President. Trump Hotels / Trump Hotels
Skift Take
The hotel business will always be a challenging one, regardless of whether your founder happens to be the 45th President of the United States or not. Whether the Trump Hotels company can continue its focus on domestic growth, while avoiding the many conflicts of interest and challenges that arise in this unprecedented situation, we'll have to wait and see.
A lot has happened since we sat down with members of the Trump Hotels executive team on January 25 during the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles.
At the time, the hotel company's founder and namesake had only been in office for a total of six days and generally, there was an air of optimism among the nearly 3,000 attendees who'd gathered at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. Live.
That optimism was shared by Eric Danziger, CEO of Trump Hotels, too. He said, "This has always been a very good conference. You know, I've been doing this conference for 25 years or something. It was interesting to see how it's gone from a couple hundred to a couple thousand. Very productive, always good."
But a lot has happened since then, including the extremely controversial travel ban President Trump signed as part of an executive order just a few days after our meeting, prohibiting people from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S.
Prior to meeting with Danziger a
