Over the past five years, America's ex-president Donald Trump has regularly bragged to world leaders, reporters, and essentially everyone else who might listen about the efficiency of his hotels.

"I have a lot of hotels all over the place, and people use them because they are the best!"

But the cost of the self-described billionaire's tenure in the Oval Office on his businesses has been exposed now, in his second-week post-presidency,

This week, the video emerged from the famous lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, once full of lobbyists, White House officials, and backers of Trump, now eerily empty.

In typical Trump style, the manager of the hotel spoke in hyperbole when questioned about the empty room by the New York Times, which has a capacity of 625 people, but kept just eight guests, maintaining that they "doing very well" and "are looking forward to welcoming many travelers back to DC over the next few months"

But a New York Times financial disclosure report released last week revealed that the Trump hotel in Washington had experienced a 63 percent decrease in sales, falling to US$15.1 million.

The Washington hotel isn't the only place paying the Trump presidency's price. Since Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, once-loyal members of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida have fled, shedding any ties with the former leader just as he arrived there.