ERIC Trump of the Trump Organisation, who have purchased Doonbeg Golf Club for €15m, has told The Clare Champion that his company intend to invest heavily in the west Clare links property. The Trump family will be in Doonbeg on Wednesday to mark their purchase of the iconic west Clare property.
“It has to be the best. It has to be great and it can be. We’re going to put a lot of money in the golf course and into the hotel. The property already is amazing. It’s always nice when it doesn’t need much work but we’re going to put a lot of money into it and make it even better,” Mr Trump said on Tuesday.
The Trump Organisation own 16 golf courses world wide, along with eleven hotels. Mr Trump says that making the decision to purchase Doonbeg Golf Club was not an difficult one.
“Everybody that we talked to about Doonbeg always raves about it. They always say it’s truly one of the best. It’s a property that we’re going to make very special. We’ll bring people from all over the world to play that course. What we’re going to do for the local economy, what we’re going to do for jobs and the amount of money we’re going to invest in this asset is going to be a very, very good thing for the area. I think we’re going to have a club that will stand with any club in the world and quite frankly a hotel that will stand with any resort in the world,” he predicted.
Eric Trump said that the group have been examining the prospect of investing in the Irish golf market for many years.
“We’ve been looking in Ireland for several years. We love Ireland. The country is obviously so important to the game of golf. We’ve been expanding our portfolio incredibly rapidly. This marks our 16th golf course in the Trump golf collection. It will be the 11th hotel in the Trump hotel collection,” he confirmed.
“Doonbeg is an unbelievable golf course and one that we can quite frankly make better. The hotel, every year, gets rated one of the best hotels in Ireland and Europe. When we bring out touch to it, what we ultimately do best which is build and improve the operations, I think this property will be second to none anywhere in the world. We’re going to add our touch and our flair. We operate all of our own hotels. This property will be a Trump Hotel property which will be great in terms of reservations and in terms of our global outreach,” Mr Trump predicted.
He said it was premature to place an exact figure on how much the Trump Organisation will invest in Doonbeg Golf Club.
“We want to announce our plans comprehensively but we are going to invest a lot of money in the property,” Mr Trump replied.
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.