The Trump Organization is in talks to sell its lease at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, in a deal that would change the brand of the iconic 19th-century building and put its operations in a new management, according to a report on Saturday. .
The sale will likely pay the Trump family less than the $ 500 million they sought when they bought the lease in 2019, an unnamed source told Axios, who did not report a new figure.
The hotel is located in the former post office pavilion, a 122-year-old structure close to the federal government-owned National Mall.
The Trump Organization leased it to the General Services Administration in 2013 and renewed it for $ 250 million before opening it to guests in 2016, weeks before the presidential election that swept Trump out of the White House.
As president, Trump hosted dozens of dinners at the hotel’s restaurant and grabbed bursts of ethics watchdogs to encourage administration officials to visit the facility. One group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, recorded 973 hotel visits by public officials during Trump’s tenure.
“People are opposed to us making so much money at the hotel, so we may be willing to sell,” son Eric Trump told the Wall Street Journal in 2019, when the family put the contract on hold. ‘first lease.
But revenues fell 60 percent in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic stopped, the Washington Post reported.
The Post has contacted the Trump Organization.