A second digital company has come forward to say that demand
and visitation to Trump hotels has likely fallen substantially this year as the
company’s chairman, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has stepped
up his campaigning efforts.
Foursquare, an app that lets users “check in” to
locales upon arrival, said this week that foot traffic to Trump’s U.S. hotels has fallen 16% year over year for the period of March through July.
For July, foot traffic at Trump hotels in Democratic-leaning
states New York, New Jersey (Foursquare included the Trump Taj Mahal in
Atlantic City even though it isn’t in the Trump portfolio), Illinois and Hawaii
was down 20% from a year earlier, while foot traffic specifically among women
in those states fell 29%.
Foursquare cited location-based data from the more than 50
million monthly global users of its Foursquare and Swarm apps.
“The data is fairly clear: Since Donald Trump announced his
candidacy in June 2015, foot traffic to Trump-branded hotels, casinos and golf
courses in the U.S. has been down,” wrote Foursquare. “Since spring, it’s
fallen more.”
Foursquare findings followed an Aug. 1 report from
search engine Hipmunk, which reported first-half bookings at Trump’s hotels
in North America were down 58% from a year earlier.
While Hipmunk declined to disclose specific booking numbers,
the company estimated that Trump’s properties accounted for 0.74% of Hipmunk’s
hotel bookings, down from 1.79% a year earlier.
Hipmunk said Trump’s New York and Las Vegas properties had
the sharpest declines in market share, while Trump’s Waikiki hotel was the
least impacted.
“Granted, Hipmunk users tend to be urban millennials, and so
our own demographics come into play here, as well,” the company said in its
post, which was updated Aug. 1 to factor in second-quarter data.
Closely held Trump Hotels doesn’t disclose revenue or
booking statistics, though it has maintained that business has been strong.
Additionally, travel agents and tour operators interviewed
by Travel Weekly for a July report were generally
complimentary of Trump’s hotels, vouching for their amenities, quality and
responsiveness to both travelers’ and travel professionals’ needs.
With Donald Trump on the campaign trail, the organization is
headed by his children Eric, Ivanka and Donald Jr.
“Our brand remains incredibly strong, and we are very
pleased with the continued performance of our businesses. The findings cited
are inconsequential to us as the site isn’t a strategic or significant booking
vehicle for our hotels,” a Trump Hotels spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to
Travel Weekly on Friday. “We leverage social media sites such as this to engage
with our valued customers, and these findings are not an accurate
representation of our performance. We encourage all businesses to exercise
caution in reporting and interpreting these figures.”
Hipmunk spokeswoman Kelly Soderlund said, “Trump Hotels does
not have insight into the clicks that we send to various sites.”