Donald Trump‘s Scottish golf course and luxury resort – Turnberry – has made a profit for the first time since the former U.S. President bought it over a decade ago.
Trump Turnberry – an 800-acre resort in Ayrshire with three golf courses and a hotel – made a profit of £571,000 (roughly $727,705) in 2022, according to a report from the Financial Times.
A year prior to that, in 2021, the resort recorded a £3.7M loss (roughly $4.7M). It had been the first time that Trump’s company had experienced financial difficulty since buying the resort for $60M in 2014.
The improvement came off reports of other separate accounts recording surging losses at the former president’s other Scottish golf course – Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen – months after it had been discovered that he inflated its value.
Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen recorded a loss of more than £738,000 (roughly $940,581) in 2022, compared to £697,000 (roughly $888,326) in 2021.
The entrance to Trump Turnberry seen in 2020, as it recorded its first ever profit in 2022
Trump has owned Turnberry since 2014 but the resort experienced financial difficulty during the COVID-19 lockdown
The profit (and losses) comes as public defenders of the state of New York sought to show that Trump consistently overvalued many of the towers, golf clubs and other assets that burnished his reputation as a business mogul before he entered politics and won the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that the property valuations were subjective and that banks were not harmed by any alleged inaccuracies because they profited from the loans.
Trump faces four potential criminal trials this election year as gathers momentum for his campaign trail to defeat incumbent, President Joe Biden. He has been charged in the states of Washington and Georgia for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, in Florida for his handling of classified documents and in New York for hush money he paid to a porn star.
Former US president Donald Trump playing golf at his Trump Turnberry course in May 2023
He has pleaded not guilty in all of those cases.
Revenue for Trump Turnberry in 2019, the last comparable full year, as COVID-19 hit soon afterward, was £19.7M. The resort then closed before reopening in April 2021.
Trump Turnberry — along with Trump’s smaller golf course in Aberdeen — were granted more than £1M in taxpayer money during Covid-19 lockdowns.
In 2018, the Trump family vowed to spend $200M on renovations for its Turnberry golf course. A newly filed 2022 annual report obtained by The Financial Times refers to a ‘significant capital investment to significantly . . . improve the resort’.
