President Trump’s troubled hotel and golf resort in Miami, Trump National Doral, is laying off 560 employees due to the impact of coronavirus, according to a notice filed to Florida officials.
The high-end resort “has been forced to conduct temporary layoffs and place its nonessential personnel on temporary layoff or furlough status” for an unspecified amount of time, according to the notice, though the Trump Organization wrote that the job cuts will be temporary. “The affected positions largely consist of food and beverage service employees, hotel service employees and golf course operations employees,” according to the notice.
That includes at least 123 servers, 43 housekeepers, 25 cooks and 13 cart and bag attendants. Employees with higher titles, like senior sales manager and head golf pro, are also among those being laid off.
Trump National Doral was already struggling before government-mandated stay-at-home orders brought the flow of hotel visitors and golfers to a halt. By far the Trump Organization’s largest and most important golf property, Doral has been hit harder than any other club in the president’s portfolio since Trump stormed into politics.
Forbes has been tracking the resort’s decline since Trump announced his candidacy. In May 2016, a top Doral executive told a group of golf course appraisers that the business was suffering. The reason: Trump’s fiery campaign rhetoric. The property has historically drawn much of its clientele from the Northeast, where Trump is largely unpopular. At the same time, big names like Nascar and the PGA Tour pulled events from Doral amid public scrutiny. Things did not improve after Trump won the presidency. A source who knows Doral’s business told Forbes that the resort lost 100,000 booked-room nights right after the election.
Source: Forbes