Changing their name hasn't helped

When Trump decided the name was actually a negative, they switched to branding their new, less luxurious, hotels Scion.  Apparently, that didn't do the trick.

July 15, 2017

Trump Hotels‘ inaugural property with the Scion brand — the first not to bear the name of U.S. President Donald Trump — has been delayed to make design changes requested by company executives after they made three visits to the site since early June, according to the developer.

The changes, which require new construction permits, will push back the opening of the hotel in Cleveland, Mississippi, by five or six months, according to Dinesh Chawla, chief executive officer of Chawla Hotels Inc. The company is building the $20 million property and will own it, while Trump Hotels will manage it.

“We have temporarily slowed down our construction because they wanted a lot of things reworked, re-engineered,” Chawla said in a phone interview.

  Skift

So they said.

Feb. 14, 2019

In the early months of the Trump administration, with the president no longer running his family business, his eldest sons embarked on a plan to roll out two new hotel lines in dozens of American cities. It reflected the ambitions of “the next generation of the company,” President Trump’s son Eric said at the time.

[...]

Plans for the two hotel chains, Scion and American Idea, are to be shelved indefinitely, most likely for the remainder of the presidency.

  NYT

And I'm betting forever.

As a practical matter, that means calling off just one agreement, in Mississippi, though two years ago the Trump Organization said it had as many as 30 potential deals in the pipeline.

Thirty...one...what's the difference?

[I]n June 2017, when the Chawlas appeared at Trump Tower in New York to announce the partnership [...] Eric Trump spoke optimistically about the company’s new direction. “You just wait to see what we do,” he teased a crowd of hotel executives, channeling his father’s flair for salesmanship.

[...]

The retrenchment comes as the company faces growing scrutiny from federal prosecutors and congressional investigators, and [w]ith Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives, any new hotel deals could have provided investigative fodder for critics of the president.

“We live in a climate where everything will be used against us, whether by the fake news or by Democrats who are only interested in presidential harassment and wasting everyone’s time, barraging us with nonsense letters,” Eric Trump said in a statement. “We already have the greatest properties in the world and if we have to slow down our growth for the time being, we are happy to do it.”

The decision to walk away from the hotel plans is the latest and clearest sign of the perils of running a family business whose owner occupies the White House.

[...]

Some of those losses stem from an ethics code that Mr. Trump was encouraged to adopt: It has prevented the company from doing new business abroad during his presidency, halting the global growth that for years brought in millions of dollars in fees. But other wounds have been more directly self-inflicted. In the United States, where the company intended to open the Scion and American Idea hotels, Mr. Trump’s divisive rhetoric and polarizing politics have turned his brand into a target for opponents.

[...]

Some potential development partners were also scared away by the prospect of intense media coverage and legal and financial vetting from the company’s outside ethics adviser, people briefed on the matter said.

The people said that as of Thursday the Trump Organization was walking away from more than a dozen potential deals in Washington, D.C., and at least five states.

I like how they use "potential". Surely "potential" deals can be claimed practically without number.

The only new hotel deal the Trumps had announced was in the Mississippi Delta, a remote region unlike anywhere the company had done business. The Trumps planned to collaborate with local hoteliers, the brothers Dinesh and Suresh Chawla, on one Scion and as many as three American Idea hotels.

[...]

Donald Jr. and Eric Trump praised the Chawlas and the would-be Scion property, predicting it would still be “an absolutely spectacular project.”

Dinesh Chawla, whose company plans to move forward on the hotels without the Trumps, declined to comment beyond the statement. [...] In the joint statement, the Chawlas said, “We understand their position completely.”

[...]

The hotels were intended to target an audience different from the patrons of the existing five-star Trump properties. The Scion, a four-star line, would be a hipper boutique option. American Idea, a chain of budget-friendly hotels, would feature hints of Americana. Scion was announced before Mr. Trump’s election, and the concept for American Idea materialized after the Trumps spotted an opportunity during the campaign to expand into farther-flung markets with fewer hotel options.

Potential partners, though, were put under a microscope.

The company aborted a Scion deal that was under discussion in Dallas, after The Times reported that the prospective partner had ties to Russia and Kazakhstan and the Trumps’ outside ethics adviser raised questions about the potential deal. The Times also reported that the Chawlas, the partners in Mississippi, had turned to the state government for millions of dollars in support through a tax rebate program.

[...]

The Trump Organization briefly managed a Livingston, N.J., hotel owned by the family of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and were in talks to open a Scion on the Jersey Shore that the Kushners would have owned. Both of those endeavors fell through.

[...]

At the outset of the presidency, Mr. Trump’s sons inherited a company that was coming off a decade of growth, having opened a slate of golf courses and luxury hotels from Chicago to Las Vegas. Marketing deals put the Trump name on properties around the world, as well as on suits, mattresses and a host of other products.

The presidency proved to be a game changer.

The Trump name became so toxic in some places that the company was paid to remove it from hotels in Toronto and New York. The majority owner of the Trump hotel in Panama took a more drastic step, ordering the T-R-U-M-P letters pried off the property with a crowbar.

In the last two years, the company has also been under scrutiny from federal investigators and Democrats in Congress, particularly after Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to arranging hush money payments during the presidential campaign to two women who said they had had affairs with Mr. Trump. The Trump Organization reimbursed Mr. Cohen for one of those payments, and is itself a focus of the ongoing investigation.

[...]

The company has also faced a torrent of negative media coverage, most recently over revelations, first reported in The Times, about its employment of undocumented workers.

[...]

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, which opened in 2016, has surpassed expectations, with its lobby regularly packed with Republican officials and operatives. It has also caused headaches for the company, having prompted lawsuits claiming that Mr. Trump is illegally profiting from the presidency. Two cases now working their way through the courts focus on whether patrons of his hotels hail from overseas or state governments, a potential violation of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution.

Trump: failing again.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.