I don’t advocate doing any of this. Doing any of these things could be potentially very disruptive for Donald J. Trump’s businesses, which he has yet to divest himself from.
Mashable recently reported that people are calling Trump’s hotel lines because he has removed the phone line (202–456–1111) that people traditionally used to contact the president.
This inspired Revolution Messaging, the same agency that helped build Bernie Sander’s campaign, to create a website that randomly connects you to Trump’s properties so you can speak your mind about Trump to whoever is listening on the other end.
While this doesn’t go very far, I began brainstorming on what things would potentially disrupt his business dealings, and after reading a thread on Reddit, I began to compile a list on Twitter.
And again, this is just some hypothetical brainstorming, I in no way advocate doing all these things to disrupt Trump’s businesses.
Calling
So, say you used WhiteHouseInc.org to make a call to a Trump property? The staff at the other end of the call is looking to get you to make a reservation. Harassing them and being a jerk to a hotel worker who is just making an hourly wage isn’t nice (don’t do that), but what would happen if you actually made a reservation?
- You can make a reservation. For any day, at any time, at any length.
- While you’re on the phone, you can ask what their cancellation policy is. Typically it’s around 72 hours, but ask.
- There is typically no fee to move a reservation. So hypothetically, you can keep rescheduling (but ask about that).
- Once you have your date set, you can cancel your reservation with no penalties before that date (set a calendar reminder).
- When you call, you could spend as long as possible on the phone. It’s always important to get as much information as possible about your reservation. Some details might include:
- Room size
- Amenities
- Available locations
- Local food
- Allergy allowances of hotel food
- Check-in times
- Check out times
- Shuttle services
- Baggage handling
- Room services
- Number of rooms available
- Number of outlets in the rooms
- TV channels offered
- Internet speeds
- Available scenic views
- Exercise rooms
- Pool availability
- Complimentary items
- Local attractions
- Upcoming events
- Locations of nearest Mosques
So, what would this do on the hotel side of things? Well, I used to work as a caterer alongside other hospitality staff. Here’s what typically happens when a guest cancels.
- It’s a pain in the butt for scheduling. It’s impossibly difficult to plan anything in advance when you have tons of bookings and aren’t sure which is going to cancel.
- It messes up a lot of other systems, like how much food is ordered, how many staff are on hand to clean rooms, how much prep work is done to receive guests.
- Not having rooms available for other guests who really want them is tough, and you have to turn guests away.
- When I worked as a caterer, often the only break I got was when a guest cancelled. So it was nice for me (doing cleanup for a guest who doesn’t show is a breeze). It’s a pain for upper management, but typically extra hours (and more money) for the hourly staff.
Online Reservations
You don’t have to call to make reservations at most places, you can do it online too.
For this next hypothetical, I have to explain a bit on how Pay Per Click Ads work, so bear with me. I run Zerflin, a digital agency, and one of the things we do is help companies set up Pay Per Click Ads.
The way this works (basically) is a company lets us know a daily budget of how much they want to spend per day. We put up their ads online, and whenever a user clicks on the ad to get to their website, it comes out of their daily budget. Once their daily budget is exhausted, their ads stop showing up until 24 hours later.
The same is true for Trump properties.
- To find the ads Trump’s properties run, typically all you have to do is search for things like “Trump Las Vegas”. That will bring up an ad at the top of the page looking something like the image (see that little green “Ad” notifier?). Note; you have to turn off AdBlock in order for this to work.
- Once you have the ad, clicking on the ad (and then spending a few minutes on the website) actually costs the Trump business money. Every time ANYONE clicks, it costs money. So you can imagine the financial impact once a lot of people do this.
- The agency that buys the ads for Trump would have to spend a great deal of money for the ads, which would be then billed to Trump properties.
- And again, once the limit is reached, the ads actually go away, which means that after a certain point, Trump properties are no longer able to advertise. At least for 24 hours, then the ads reappear.
- The Trump properties are DC, Miami, Waikiki, Chicago, Las Vegas, NYC, SoHo, Albemarle, Vancouver, Toronto, Panama, Doonbeg, Turnberry, and the MacLeod House and Lodge.
- Multiple services provide ads in addition to Google, such as Bing and Yahoo.
- Trump hotels typically rely on other services for exposure, like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google Maps, and Foursquare. It would be important to review your reservation experience on there. Some of them even have their own Ad systems that Trump properties pay for.
Connecting Online
There are multiple ways to connect with the Trump properties online, to talk about whatever you want to talk about.
- They have an online contact form.
- They have a Facebook page (and each property has its own Facebook page).
- They have a Twitter account.
- They have an Instagram account.
- They have a YouTube channel.
- They have a Google Plus page.
- They have a Pinterest account.
Again, I am in no way advocating that massive amounts of people disruptively spend time doing this. That would be disruptive.
Note: If any of the information I’ve left here is incorrect (or if you did some brainstorming of your own) let me know and I’ll update it.
Edit: Looks like the threats are already coming in.
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