De-Trumping the Trump Soho

Confession!

OK – I just want to get this off my chest and out there.

I have stayed in a Trump Hotel.

I’m not proud of it. I regret it. It was just something that happened. It was a long time ago. I must have fallen in with the wrong crowd.

I thought it best that you hear it here, and from me, before the Washington Post publishes another article exposing me.

We were seeing The Ring

OK, ok. It was a long time ago, way back in 2012, if you must know. We were travelling to New York to see the Robert Lepage designed Ring Cycle at the Met (which is being revived in 2018/19 season – and which I can highly recommend:

We decided that for the duration of the cycle – about a week, we would stay on the upper west side, but really, we wanted to be with our people down in Chelsea or Soho – so we spent the first few days of our stay in New York, at the Trump Soho, and visited the newly opened 9/11 memorial amongst other things.

The Trump Soho was a bit of a surprise. There are three things I particularly remember about it. The first was the small foyer space, but I figured that’s what happens when you have a tall thin building in Manhatten.

The second was the amazing bed, which my partner claimed is the most comfortable bed he has ever slept in. The bed had the most amazing bed topper, which made it soft and unctuous but still firm and supportive. The third was that they had actual live orchid plants in the bathrooms. For some reason, real flowers in a hotel room make me happy, and I have been known to go out and buy a bunch of flowers and get housekeeping to deliver a vase if we stay in a hotel for a week or more. Finally, the hotel, being then, the only tall hotel in Soho, had amazing views. It wasn’t quite the same as the above, as it faced a different direction. Instead, it looked like this:

Views over the Hudson, and the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, towards Jersey City. We had a delightful stay and took the opportunity to explore the area around the hotel, including such singular experiences as the Tenement Museum in the up and coming Lower East Side – which is one of my top 10 museum experiences ever. Make sure you book, as it is an actual tenement building, so you can only see it in guided small groups. It’s definitely worth the organisation.

Soho losing its Trump

The hotel hasn’t been doing too well since Trump has been in the White House. Liberal New York does not see eye to eye with its president, and so the hotel’s occupancy rates have been suffering, and events and conference bookings have been slowing.

This is not the first property to come to an agreement about the removal of the Trump name from its brand. There have been plenty of others. In fact, the only one of his properties in the USA that seems to be benefiting from his occupancy of the White House, is Trump International Hotel, Washington, which is heavily booked.

Despite his boasts, Trump doesn’t own much property. Most of his ‘property’ comes in the form of licensing and management agreements. So the Trump Soho pays him/his business entities a ‘management fee’ of 5.57% according to documents seen by Reuters.

Discount rooms because of the ‘Trump’ in the title

According to the Washington Post, rooms are being discounted dramatically, available online for under US$300. In 2012 we paid AU$520/night including taxes. The exchange rate then was about US$1 to AU$0.95 (those were the days!). So the US$ equivalent would have been about US$542.

I’m seeing them for January at US$312 (UA$410) on Expedia. That’s awfully cheap for a New York five star hotel room.

Would I stay there again?

At this rate, even 5 years on, I would stay there again, especially once the ‘Trump’ is removed.