Several Trump hotels are listed on Groupon, the scammy discount platform that should’ve gone out of business a long time ago, a tip provided by a National Zero reader revealed Friday.
Groupon was popular for a brief period in the late 2000s-early 2010s and raised billions in investor cash as a Silicon Valley unicorn before the inherently predatory nature of its business model became fully realized. For example, a pizzeria would sign on to Groupon and the company would sell coupons for a pizza that ordinarily costs $12.00 discounted down to $8.00 upon which the company would keep $4.00, leaving the pizzeria to collect 33% of gross revenue at 100% food and labor cost. More often than not, the Groupon buyers would be cheap assholes who would simply move on to the next Groupon deal being offered rather than be converted to returning customers. This is obviously the complete opposite of the outcome that any sane restauranteur would want from a vendor/partner and the business model quickly fell out of fashion.
How Groupon is still operating all these years and bad publicity later is a mystery, but that the Trump Organization’s hotels are listed on the platform (though it does not appear there are any discount offers available currently) makes perfect sense. Birds of a feather and all.