Eric Trump on why the Gulf is the future of luxury real estate

Dar Global and The Trump Organization have unveiled their most ambitious Middle Eastern project yet: Trump International Hotel & Tower, Dubai. Standing tall at 80 floors and 350 metres on Sheikh Zayed Road, this launch marks the Trump Organization’s first hotel and tower in the UAE and its fifth collaboration with Dar Global.

Beyond its scale and prime location, the tower’s duplex penthouses with private sky pools are inspired by the iconic Trump Tower penthouse on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Floor-to-ceiling glass, opulent interiors, and panoramic skyline views come together to set a new benchmark for high-end living in Dubai.

Also central to the development is The Trump — a members-only private club that will offer hand-curated experiences in wellness, gastronomy, and leisure, catering to Dubai’s most discerning clientele.

To mark the official launch, Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, visited Dubai and spoke with Gulf Business editor Neesha Salian. From the tower’s rapid approval to the region’s “yes-first” attitude to development, Trump shared why Dubai, and the wider Gulf are becoming the Trump Organization’s most exciting frontier for luxury real estate.

Here are excerpts from the conversation.

The Trump Organization is actively expanding across the Gulf, including iconic projects like Trump Tower Dubai. What excites you most about being in this region?

It’s every developer’s biggest playground. There are no “no’s” in Dubai and other parts of the Gulf. You go around the world — Europe especially frustrates me, and that’s tough because my mother was European, and I spent a lot of time there. But you try to get anything done, and all you hear is “no”.

In the Gulf, you’re met with “yes — and make it bigger, better, more luxurious”. That’s an amazing attitude. Most countries are always looking backward. The Gulf doesn’t do that. It only looks forward.

You visit places that talk about history from 800 years ago. Here, they’re talking about where they’ll be in 50 years, in 30 years, in a decade. Big aspirations, smart people, monumental capital and mega projects. It’s genuinely exciting to be part of.

I tell people all the time, as many think their country or system does it better. I always say, be careful, because there are regions out there that are winning the race and doing so in a very big way. As a businessman, as a capitalist, as someone who values efficiency and loves to create, it’s inspiring to watch what’s happening — not just in Dubai, Abu Dhabi but across the Gulf.

Look at Saudi. We’ve got two, maybe three projects there. Look at Diriyah and some of the masterplans. Nowhere else in the world could they pull something like that off. It’s a lot of fun to be part of.

How do the forward-looking values here align with those of the Trump Organization?

We charge hard. We make decisions fast.

In Europe, if you want to build a golf course and move one green seven feet, you’ll spend five years in approvals, environmental studies, other surveys — you name it.

Now look at Dubai. We got Trump Tower Dubai—an 1,150-foot-tall building with the world’s highest outdoor swimming pool  — approved in under a month. And that’s not because we’re Trump. It’s because this country is pro-business and wants to see great things happen.

Around the world, I see so many projects I’d love to do. But they take too long, cost too much, and are too hard to get off the ground. If they had the Gulf mentality and just said yes, I’d start tomorrow. But I don’t have the energy to spend seven years fighting for something I want to do out of passion. So, it doesn’t get done.

And honestly, I don’t think many countries realise how much that holds them back.

Tell us about your partnership with Dar Global.

We truly fell in love with them. I’ve known Ziad [ El Chaar, the CEO of Dar Global] for about 15 years now and I worked with him on an incredible gold course project.

Honestly, Dar global are exceptional at what they do. They’re fast, pragmatic, and incredibly focused on luxury. They’re determined to undertake the most beautiful, most incredible projects in the world. Beyond that, I truly enjoy working with them as people. Let’s be honest, we’re fortunate enough to work with anyone, but when you find people who not only meet all the professional criteria but also ones you genuinely enjoy being around, that’s a “marriage made in heaven”.

For me, the people component is more important now. Life is short — you want to enjoy the journey. If you’re going to travel around the world for four or five days, you want to have a great time. You want to create something incredible, but you also want to enjoy the experience. And with them, we’re so focused on work, we’ll be in a place for five days and barely sleep — but we enjoy every second of it.

That’s what truly defines a partnership. It’s not just about the physical product — we can do great work with a lot of people. But it’s the partnership itself, the love, the attention, the professionalism, and the honesty. Those qualities matter to me tremendously.

Trump properties span across the globe. How do you ensure consistency in maintaining the unique identity of each project while managing such a diverse portfolio?

We’re building projects globally, but we haven’t become one of those “shotgun” companies with multiple hotels in the same city. Many big hotel brands do this, and while they’ve done well, it makes their properties lose their lustre — they all blend together and lose their uniqueness.

I travel 200 days a year, and sometimes I can’t even tell which five-star brand I stayed at because they all feel the same, like clay that just blends together. You can’t be unique when that happens.

And I never want to be that company. I want all our projects to look so different. We have wineries in the US with 19 rooms in 2,000 acres of vineyards in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have projects on the Las Vegas Strip with 1,282 rooms in the tallest building in Las Vegas. We’ve got what’s going to be the tallest outdoor pool in the world in [Trump Tower] Dubai, and then we have Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

Every single one of our projects is unique. It’s contextual to the location. You can feel it; you can see it. And when you look at our employees, they’re families of ours. They’re not these big public corporations. They’re not numbers. They’re not people who come and go. They’re people who have stayed with us for decades, and you can feel that when you walk through the doors. You can feel the sense of family.

When you walk through the doors of a lot of other places, you may not feel the warmth. You can tell that people might do a nice job, it might be a nice experience, you might have a beautiful room, but people are a lot less invested in what that building is. It doesn’t feel like their own. It just feels like they’re in it, but not really part of it.

We take tremendous pride in this. We want the best projects in the world. We want them to be uniquely ours. We don’t want the ‘mass’. We want the best. And that’s my focus.

It enables me to avoid the problem you asked about. Don’t get me wrong, we’re incredibly busy. We’ve got close to 30 projects all over the world, but it allows us to put attention into all of them and really know them, feel them. I’ll know every single hotel, every building we have. I’ll know every detail of those projects.

How do you think technology is changing real estate, from tokenisation to the way we build and experience structures?

I could talk about this one forever. Obviously, technology is having a huge impact.

We’ll probably be the first mass-market project on a truly global scale to literally offer people the ability to buy their units in Bitcoin, in cryptocurrency. I spend a lot of time in that world. Tokenisation of real estate — it’s coming, and it’s coming very, very quickly.

That actually benefits us more than most, because guess what? It’s a lot harder to tokenise a very low-profile project — one no one’s heard of, in a bad location, with no brand recognition — than it is to say, “Hey, we’re building Trump Tower Dubai”. It’s the best hotel in the city, the best views, the best amenities, the best private club. We minted 20 million tokens — who wants to buy in?

That’s a massive advantage for brands like ours. We’re in demand. We’re phenomenal locations where people want to be a part of the story. Tokenisation opens access to a financial world that most people could never have been involved in. Someone might own a millionth of a percentage of a project — but they still get to feel that ownership, that pride of being part of something significant.

It also really opens up capital markets. So many investors today have limited options. You’ve got public companies — but they probably make up less than 1 per cent of the companies out there — yet everyone’s concentrated in those. Tokenisation changes that. Suddenly, you don’t need the public markets. You can invest in Trump Tower Dubai. And that’s a cool thing.

Technology affects so many aspects of the business. On the customer side: booking, service, overall experience. More and more, your phone is becoming your room key. You bypass the front desk, get to your room faster. The room service menu pops right onto your screen. It makes the entire travel experience more seamless.

But on the finance side — tokenisation, crypto, stablecoins, Bitcoin — that’s where the real shift is coming. Sit here in 10 years, and watch: you’ll see a major intersection between the tangible world and the intangible world.

That includes buying and selling, of course, but also financing, paying vendors, staff, receiving customer payments, issuing refunds. All of it — quicker, cheaper, more transparent. And that’s a very exciting thing.

There’s been a lot of global debate around President Donald Trump’s tariffs. What are you seeing in terms of reaction from the Gulf? And what’s your broader take on it?

That’s a really interesting question because the Gulf is one of those regions that isn’t impacted by tariffs the way other parts of the world are. The Gulf isn’t producing mass-market consumer goods and dumping them worldwide for pennies. That’s not the focus here. This region is built around hospitality, big business, oil and gas — and those sectors typically aren’t targets for tariffs.

What the Gulf really values are safety and security.

Now, if you look at the last four years globally, we’ve seen what happens when there’s weak leadership in America. The world changed—and not for the better. Conflicts erupted, like the Russia–Ukraine crisis. The Middle East, which had been one of the most stable regions, saw escalating tensions. What the UAE and others in the Gulf are saying is simple: we want peace, we want prosperity.

In my view, there aren’t many regions in the world that are more aligned with American values right now than parts of the Middle East. In fact, I’d say the UAE has been one of America’s strongest allies, especially when you consider that many other nations have taken advantage of US generosity — taking jobs, industry, and support without giving much back.

The Gulf is different. It’s built its success through vision, creativity, independence, and smart investment. And that makes for a very strong and mutually respectful relationship.

So yes, tariffs are a powerful tool, and the US will no longer be used or taken advantage of. Those days are over. Countries that continue to operate that way will feel the impact. But regions like the Gulf — where the focus is long-term growth, partnership, and mutual respect — will flourish in this kind of environment.

And at the core of that success is what makes Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and the wider region so unique: a commitment to security, stability, and forward-thinking leadership. A strong America only makes that foundation stronger.

What are the leadership values you’ve taken from your family that help shape how you build and grow your business today?

This might sound a bit contrite — and I think most real estate developers would say it — but I’m not sure all of them truly mean it: attention to detail. Detail is everything.

Many companies have high turnover — people come and go, without a real sense of belonging. But in this industry, you need a deep love for what you do.

Real estate, especially globally, is complex and demanding, with constant travel and time away from family. It’s not for everyone — you have to truly love it.

You have to be willing to sleep in beds that aren’t yours a lot of nights. But at the end of the day, you can sit back in some of these places, look at a skyline, and say, “That’s pretty cool — that’s there because of our efforts”. That building will be home to thousands of guests every night. It’ll support employees, their families, children going to local schools. You create a whole ecosystem.

So, love what you do, work hard, pay attention to small details, and have fun. Do the projects you want to do — not just the ones that are the most profitable. That’s how I’ve shaped my life.