Cypriot businessman blames Trump brand for empty hotel rooms

PANAMA CITY – Cypriot businessman Orestes Fintiklis has spent months trying to “re-brand the Trump International Hotel and replace the Trump Organization as its manager” in Panama City, according to the Washington Post. On February 22, Fintiklis, who is the majority owner of the hotel, ordered Trump employees to leave the property, and when they refused, the police were called in, the Post reported, adding that a confrontation ensued “which included yelling but no physical altercation, according to a Trump Organization official.”

Fintiklis has tried lawsuits and letters in his takeover bid, and “blames Trump’s brand and Trump’s company for declining revenue and empty rooms” at the hotel, the Post reported.

He had tried on February 22 to “deliver letters of termination to the staff,” the Post reported adding that the “police came, the Trump Organization official said, but did not allow Fintiklis to eject the staff.”

“At one point, the hotel’s power was turned off, apparently by an ally of Fintiklis, the Trump official said,” the Post reported, adding that the electricity was restored soon after.

Fintiklis’ lawyer told local reporters that “Fintiklis had asked a Panamanian court to issue an order allowing him into the hotel to try to eject the Trump Organization’s employees,” the Post reported.

“I was not allowed to have a room in my own hotel,” Fintiklis wrote in a legal complaint that his lawyer showed to local reporters, according to the Spanish news service EFE and reported by the Post. He complained that Trump hotel employees used “intimidation, threats.”

Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, responded with an emailed statement, the Post reported, “We have always been happy to resolve our differences in a civil and professional manner. The acts by ownership over the last few days however have been pure thuggery.”

By February 24, the hotel lobby was peaceful, with the usual tourists and residents circulating and without the police presence.

As the Post reported, “The Trump hotel in Panama is a ‘hotel condominium’ — in essence, its hotel rooms are owned individually by investors, and the owners collectively contract with Trump to manage them.”

According to the Post, “the dispute began in November, when Fintiklis — whose firm had bought 202 of the hotel’s 369 units last year, and who now heads the condo owners’ association — sought to terminate the Trump Organization as the hotel’s managers.”

Unfortunately for Fintiklis, the Trump Organization’s contract expires in 2031. He argues, however that the company, the Post reported, “had effectively broken the terms of its contract by allowing the hotel to fall into poor condition, and for allowing its occupancy rate to decline rapidly. Owners in the hotel have confirmed that the hotel seems to be losing business, noting that their individual shares of the revenue have declined — or even disappeared.”

Trump’s unpopularity in Latin America is undoubtedly part of the problem for the hotel.

Jeffrey Rabiea, a New York businessman who owns three hotel rooms in the Trump Panama hotel, said last month, the Post reported, “It’s a bloodbath, basically. It’s a financial bloodbath. Nobody wants to go there. If you’ve got a Marriott and a Hyatt and a Trump, you’re not going to Trump.”

Lawsuits have been filed in New York and Delaware, and an international arbitration case — “all initiated by Fintiklis or his attorneys” and “none of them seem close to a conclusion,” the Post reported.

The billowing sail-shaped building where the hotel is located also includes residential condominium units managed by a different company after the owners rebelled years ago against management by the Trump Organization.

After the 2016 election, Trump’s name was removed from three hotels, in Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, and Manhattan’s SoHo. Like the hotel in Panama, others owned the Toronto and SoHo hotels and they were “managed by the Trump Organization for a fee,” the Post reported, adding that “in his 2017 financial disclosures, Trump reported that his company took in $810,000 in management fees from the Panama hotel over the previous 15 1/2 months.”