The Trump Organization has reportedly agreed to sell its Washington hotel for $375m (£279m), with the property to be renamed the Waldorf Astoria and managed by Hilton group. The sale to Miami-based investment firm CGI Merchant Group is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
The 263-room hotel, housed in the historic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, less than a mile from the White House, opened to the public in September 2016. The Trump Organization had held a 60-year lease on the building and had been seeking buyers since 2019.
The hotel attracted controversy during Donald Trump's presidency. In 2018, religious leaders called for its liquor licence to be revoked, claiming the owner was “not a person of good character”. Earlier this year, a congressional investigation found that Mr Trump had “grossly exaggerated” the hotel's profits when he claimed it made $150m during his term; in fact, it lost more than $70m.
The same committee found that Mr Trump appeared to have “concealed potential conflicts of interest” relating to his ownership of the hotel and his roles as lender and guarantor of third-party loans. Documents showed the hotel received $3.7m in payments from foreign governments, enough to cover 7,400 nights at an average daily rate.
The Trump Organization denied wrongdoing and called the report “misleading”. Neither the Trump Organization nor CGI Merchant Group responded to the BBC's requests for comment on the sale.
