Daybreak Holiday: Global Technology, Antitrust, Summer Travel

Hello everybody, and thank you so much for joining us
for this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US markets are
closed for the Juneteenth holiday. I'm Nathan Hager. Coming up
this hour. We look at the state of antitrust in
America with a paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery
getting final approval from the Justice Department. But is it final?
We'll discuss with Jenniferree of Bloomberg Intelligence. Plus, the official
start of summer is just days away. We'll look at
what's in store for summer travel season with Nicki Eckstein
and Chris Rouser of Bloomberg Pursuits. But we begin with
earnings because one of the big flyers in the tech space,
Micron Technology, is set to report next week. For a
look at that and more of what the tech landscape's
looking like about halfway through the year, we are very
pleased to welcome man Deep Singh, Global head of Technology
Research at Bloomberg Intelligence, along with Bloomberg Intelligence Senior tech
analyst anurag Rana. It's great to have the both of
you with us on this holiday. I mean, you just
think about the run, not just Micron, but pretty much
all of the memory chip stocks have had this year.
It has been mind boggling, Mandy, what are we expecting
when we actually hear second quarter numbers from Micron in
the coming week.
When it comes to Micron, they have had a phenomenal
upward revision this year simply because memory demand has inflected.
First we saw that with HPM, the high bandwidth memory
that was used with all the accelerator chips. Now we
have seen the same with DRAM and nand and other
types of memory. And you know, there is a lot
of stockpiling going on, but for a good reason, because
you know, when you look at the large ANGLEIG models
and the inference in side of llms, there is no
doubt that you know, these models are being used for
you use cases like coding agents, and that has just
resulted in a lot more demand for all types of memories.
And that's showing up in the device upgrades, that showing
up in the new server deployments. But this is a
very big secular trend and which is why you're seeing,
you know, Micron probably going to post to over two
hundred percent growth, you know this year in twenty twenty six.
That demand has led to huge increases as you know,
in memory chip prices and huge increases in capital expenditure
forecast by so many of these companies. I wonder when
we start to see a top on both of those
man deep do you see that on the horizon.
The way these cycles work is, you know, as you know,
Memories and oligopoly with Micron, s Kehinex and Samsung, and
these companies haven't really expanded their capacity in a big way.
So when you look at the capex of the memory companies,
they've been more around you know, mid to high single
digit type of capacity expansion and the sort of demand
trends that I alluded to earlier, we have seen demand
grow you know, two x three x. So when there
is such big you know, supply demand mismatch, I mean,
the pricing obviously is off the charge, which is a
big driver of what the top line growth of over
two hundred percent. But we don't see that you know,
supply demand coming into equilibrium anytime soon, simply because that
capacity expansion is so muted. And until these memory companies
expand their supply in a big way, or we find
you know, there is a new memory player out of
China or somewhere else, it's hard to imagine, you know,
what will resolve this mismatch anytime soon.
I want to bring you into the conversation, Anna rog
because I know you cover many of the hyperscalers that
are behind so much of this memory demand, as well
as the software stocks that could potentially be disrupted by
what we're seeing in the AI build out. What's your
view on where the demand pictures headed from here?
So it looks like that the kapex is going to
be revised upward again, which is obviously good for all
the semi names and memory as when he was talking about,
but that's really the big you know focus right now.
We came into the ear with a very common trait
that was everybody's long semis and shot software and that
continues to be the case, although you know, we have
seen some relief over the past few weeks for software names,
but you know, the easy trade for everybody is Kapix
is going up, so the hardware and the semi names
should benefit because of all that's going into that realm.
And we are uncertain how the software world is going
to shape up because these models are getting smarter day
by day. And if that's the case, you don't need
to pay so much for packet software down the road.
So that still remains the case if you look at it.
You know, Microsoft is down over fifteen percent this year,
and yet some of the other cloud vendors such as
Amazon up is up this year. So that's that's your
dichotomy over there.
Well and Rock, how do you see the software name
sort of navigating the potential for disruption at this point.
We haven't just heard from the hyperscalers. You've heard from
the likes of Adobe and Oracle as well.
Yeah, I mean each one of them has a different
story that's going through it at this point. So when
you look at you know, we published a big report
earlier in the year. When you look at bigger companies
like SAP, we think they are a little bit better
protected then maybe somebody like an Adobe, where the product
or the LMS can do some of that model generation
or the image generation as well as the as movie generation.
And I think that's where a lot of the arguments is.
We are not seeing a lot of fundamentals get eroded
at this point only because we are still early in
the AI model race. But down the road there is
a high chance that some of them will lose business
to the lower end of the market. The bigger question
is whether enterprises will shift into their homegrown systems or
they still depend on the likes of Workday and Salesforce
and all the other companies. At this point, we are
not seeing that mass shift over because again, as I said,
it's early in the game, but I think that's the
big risk for them.
We're speaking with annorag Rana, senior tech analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence,
along with bi's global head of Tech research Mandeep saying
for a broad look at the tech space as we're
getting closer to the second half of the year. Mandeep,
of course, one of the big elephants in the room
in tech right now is the arrival of SpaceX in
the public market, not just a rocket company, but positioning
itself as a major player in AI as well with
these dreams of data centers in orbit at some point,
how do you see SpaceX affecting the overall AI race
Now that it's in the public market, That.
Makes it even more exciting in terms of you know
what we are witnessing with this big technology shift that
we are talking about in terms of AI and with
space really, you know, it's SpaceX with IPO has shown
that it is iconic in terms of what they have achieved.
And even with the orbital data center vision, I know,
you know, right now we don't have anything tangible in
terms of actual compute being done in orbital data center,
but as a concept, you know, it is huge in
terms of meeting some of the compute requirements that we
are talking about with AI. And if that vision turns
into a reality, which is what they laid out, you
know with the road show, it could be huge for
you know, just the technology dominance that these companies have had,
and I think the aipiece of SpaceX is clearly a
vertical strategy that they are pursuing. You know, not only
do they have the compute with the terrestrial data centers,
they also have this orbital data center capacity and they
can deploy it within their own rock model, which is
what they're hoping to improve with the acquisition of Cursors.
So a lot of moving parts in that company, but
you know, they have a grand vision and if there's
anyone who can make that space vision a reality, I
would bet on SpaceX. And so it is a big bet.
And we still don't know how feasible it is to
you know, send these one hundred ton loads to space
because they've shown they can do that for up to
twenty three fifty tons, but sending it one hundred tons
of payload and then doing that in a reusable way,
that is the part that I think technology challenge that
still needs to be solved for, and I think SpaceX
is best position to do that.
Of course, it is early days in terms of how
SpaceX is going to perform in the market, and to
your point on a rock about it being early days
in the AI race in general, in terms of the
stocks that you cover, some of those software names. Is
there a SpaceX impact on your coverage area.
No, there is no SpaceX direct impact other than you know,
the traders trying to you know, I would say fivoit
more towards those kinds of names, and perhaps you know,
selling some of the traditional technology names, whether it's in
consulting or software. I mean, we have seen some pressure
on that in the last few weeks, but you know,
by and large, there is no direct impact.
There are so many dynamics around the tech story as well,
not just this huge amount of competition, the valuations, but
you know, there's been some level of pushback as well,
not just from many consumers who are concerned about AI's
impact on their job prospects or society as a whole,
but some government pushback as well when it comes to
Anthropic in particular. Man, Deep, how do you see that
potentially affecting how things go in terms of the fundamentals
for these companies.
Yeah, Look, Anthropic has had a phenomenal growth this year
here to Their revenue has grown, you know, five x
from where they were back in December, and you know,
it's a forty seven billion dollar revenue run rate business.
So if something like this happens where a government bands,
you know, the use of its models outside the country,
it is a big deal and it will have repercussions
in terms of, you know, what kind of growth we
can expect, especially outside the US for a frontier model
like Entropic. But it's still early days. I think Entropic
being labeled the supply chain risk was always a threat.
And you know, they talked about the capabilities of this
Mythos model, which they commercially released under a new name
called Fable. This has capabilities that could be used for
all sorts of purpose is not just for useful work,
but also you know, for cyber attacks, and I think
poses a lot of risks. So from that perspective, we
are still learning about the capabilities of this model, and
I think like all these frontier labs may have to
take a pause and really highlight the risks involved in
deploying these models at scale. And that's where I think
the governments will step in and make sure that sovereign
element is clear, and you know, they know exactly how
to regulate this, so there will be a lot more
emphasis on regulation and government involvement with the deployment of
these models going forward.
Really appreciate the perspective from both of you as we
keep a closer eye on the tech space into the
second half. That's on a rag Rana and man Deep
sing covering tech for Bloomberg Intelligence. Up next, we're going
to take a look at the current state of anti
trust with Jennifer Reed of blaeg Intelligence. It's twenty minutes
past the hour. I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg.
Welcome back to this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US
markets are closed for the Juneteenth holiday. I'm Nathan Hager.
The Justice Departments closed, it's antitrust probe into Paramount Skydance,
and it's one hundred and ten billion dollar purchase of
Warner Brothers Discovery. But it's far from a done deal.
For more, let's bring in Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analysts
Jennifer Ree set up the leading question, Jen why is
it not a done deal?
Right?
You'd think that that would be a big hurdle for
them to cross, but it wasn't really much of a surprise,
to be honest. But this deal needs approval from regulators
in the UK and also in Europe before it can close.
That's a term within their agreement, but also the laws
of those jurisdictions say that they need to get clearance
before they've closed. And so those are ongoing investigations with
some important dates coming up in July and August, whereby
each one will decide whether or not they'll move into
an in depth investigation of the deal or cleared the
deal with or without concessions.
So, the UK and the EU, what are the main
hurdles that they could potentially be putting up against Paramount
sky Dance in that Warner Brothers acquisition, So.
They're looking at a lot of what I think challengers
or complainants in this country have looked at the overlap
in the movie theaters. It's really kind of Big five
going down to Big four. There's some other fringe studios,
but specifically, I think in Europe the concern might be
an overlap in children's television stations. Most children's television stations
in both the UK and Europe are owned by American companies,
And with this combination Paramount and Warner Brothers, you bring
together cartoon network Nickel, Nick Junior, cartoon Nito, and they
both have some international children's channels as well. So I
suspect that there may be some concessions needed with respect
to divesting some of those channels.
Okay, I think there'd been some Bloomberg News reporting that
Paramount sky Dance might be willing to work with some
of the regulators overseas on potentially divesting some of those
children's channels. Would that be enough? You know?
I think it will maybe with a few behavioral concessions,
like promises to license their content to other distributors. Streaming
distributors in those jurisdictions on fair, reasonable and non discriminatory
terms rather than favoring their own streaming products. A few
behavioral concessions, but I think that'll probably be enough to
get those deals over the line. You know, when Disney
acquired Fox, this is what they had to do. In Europe,
there was an issue there with an overlap in what
they called factual channels. These were mostly channels operated by
A and E, and in order to get that deal cleared,
they did need to divest I think with something five
or six channels that were A and E stations.
Now, if the deal does get over the line in
the UK and EU, would that be the ultimate clearance
for this?
So not necessarily. You have the California Attorney General investigating
the deal now with apparently a group of about ten
or nine other states. The states have the right independently
to enforce federal antitrust law no matter what the Department
of Justice does. So if the States determined that they
think the deal could harm competition, they can still bring
a lawsuit. And they keep saying, hey, this isn't over yet.
We're investigating and we're not done yet, so it's possible
they could still go to court to challenge the deal.
Even though it's been cleared by the DOJ and will
likely be cleared elsewhere too.
And to that point, the Justice Department has said they
don't think that joining these two companies would be unfair
to competition. So what are the potential arguments that the
States could make.
Well, the first thing I'll say about this is that
the Department of Justice did say that, but gave very
very little detail. They basically just said, hey, it's a
competitive market. And these companies have promised the world. They've
promised to invest, They've promised to maintain employment, they've promised
to increase their slate of movies they produce, and to
maintain theatrical distribution before going to streaming. But usually that's
not those kinds of promises aren't good enough in somebody.
Usually the authorities want those to be put down on paper.
So it may be that the states there are a
couple options here. The States just simply want to do
better than saying here's what the company said they would do,
and we're okay with that. You know, they might want
some kind of a settlement. So the States are legally
bound to those the companies are legally bound. And again
I think there's a lot of room here. You know,
antitrust and harm to markets can really be very gray
and can be subjective. You know, where one assessment could
show unlikely harm, another could show likely harm. Because remember
they're looking at what might happen in the future, if
two companies come together, what might their incentives be, what
might happen in the market, So everybody speculating. Obviously it's
not out of the realm of possibility that two different
speculators could come out differently on that. And in the
markets here, it's really very close. We tend to think
of about a thirty percent combined market share as kind
of being that level by which below it you're probably
not too worried, but above it, maybe you have some
concern about harm. And I do have to say, in
most of the overlap markets for this deal, the shares
get to about that level, but don't exceed that level.
So it's hard to make out kind of an initial
case that this could harm competition. But in particular, I
think California is concerned about labor and the labor market
in those cities in the state where they're making movies
and content.
Yeah, to have California potentially leading the charge on a
challenge to this merger. It makes you think that, you know,
this is kind of the home state, right, I mean,
this is where Hollywood is. So what's the track record
or is there a track recw for California when it
comes to mounting challenges to mergers in their sort of
home state industry.
I would say that that track record is pretty good,
but it's very new.
You.
It is unusual in the past for the states to
go out independently. They're generally aligned with the federal antitrust enforcers.
But what we have seen as a bit of a
departure in the last couple of years whereby states are
striking out independently in cases where they deemed the Department
of Justice having been to lax or not doing it
their job, and they've had some success. So, for instance,
Nextstar Integna have merged. They were cleared by the Department
of Justice and Federal Communications Commission, but the States said,
not so fast, we think this is a problematic deal.
They went to court. They tried to get to court
before the deal closed, but they didn't manage to do that.
But they went to court and they successfully obtained a
preliminary injunction stopping the companies for now from integrating until
the judge can decide on a permanent block on the deal,
So that's in litigation. They also had great success in
a lawsuit against Live Nation for monopolization. That was a
jury trial and the Department of Justice was a plaintiff
with the States there, but settled during the first week
of trial. But at a large group of states said no,
this is a problematic deal. The settlement doesn't resolve the concerns.
They went forward. They litigated the case and they have
won a liability decision, so again a big success for them,
and that's still litigating now. The remedy aspect of that
is what we're looking at.
Now.
We're speaking with Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analyst Jennifer Ree
on where the Paramount Skydance Warner Brothers merger could go
now that the Justice Department has approved the deal. If
we do get to a point, Jen where the States
bring a lawsuit and it does come to court, what
are the potential arguments that Paramount Skydance could make in
their defense that you know, combining with Warner Brothers wouldn't
be a harm to competition.
Well, I think exactly what they've said to the Department
of Justice. No, we're promising something like thirty releases, and
if we're going to release that many movies, we need
to maintain both of these studios and maintain the employment
because otherwise we can't get to that volume that we
promise a certain theatrical release window in big theaters, and
so it's not going to harm theaters, and it won't
harm labor and g and streaming. When we combine HBO
Max and Discovery Plus and Paramount Plus, we're still much
smaller than all the other big streamers out there, Netflix
in particular, and combined we only get to about I
think a fifteen percent share in the United States. And
these are just simply not historically problematic figures in antitrusturisprudence.
So I think those are the kind of arguments they'll make.
And if it gets to that point that we do
see those kinds of arguments, could we see the Justice
Department looking for further commitments or even further concessions from
Paramount I.
Think not at this point, because as of June sixteenth,
the Department of Justice cleared the deal and issued a
statement saying, you know, we're done. We don't think it
would harm competition, but you could see a settlement with
the companies in the States whereby they make certain promises.
Now, time is of the essence, isn't it for paramount
s guidance to really get this deal done to avoid
ticking fees to Warner Brothers Discovery? Right, So how does
that affect things?
Right?
So, they have this ticking fee that'll kick in at
the end of September. I mean interestingly, the end date
in their purchase agreement it isn't until June of twenty
twenty seven, so they technically have time in their agreement
to litigate if they have to. But what they're going
to need to do if they get this clearance, these
clearances from the UK and the EU, but the States
go ahead and sue them, they're going to have to
fight hard against a preliminary injunction that would be a
temporary or short term block on closing the deal, while
a judge can decide on a more permanent solution, because
that would absolutely extend well beyond that September thirtieth date
by which the ticking fee would kick in. And I'm
thinking they're probably going to want to avoid pay that,
So they'll be fighting hard at that stage of the
litigation or I think trying hard to settle with the States.
Could that affect the further the terms of the deal
to try to get out from under those ticking fees
as fast as they can.
You know, I don't think so. I think they're just
going to do everything they can to fight hard and
put resources into this and to be aggressive to try
to prevent anything that stops them from closing before that
September thirty date.
So how do you see this shaking out as we
get closer to that. You mentioned the dispute in the
UK and the EU trying to get through that as well.
What's the timetable? How do you see things playing out?
You know, I think what the companies will do is
offer up concessions in the UK and EU and get
those jurisdictions to clear before going into in depth investigations,
because if either one did open an in depth investigation,
it would absolutely extend well beyond September thirty. Right now,
they're in what they call a phase one, whereas an
in depth would be phase two, and Europe has to
make a decision about that July seventh in the UK
on August seventh, But the companies can offer concessions before
those dates, and I think that they will do that
because then they can get these clearances before September thirty
for sure, and I think that's how that'll probably play out.
Do you see any chance of any of these factors
scrubbing the deal? I wonder if Netflix is sort of
still waiting in the wings there, or is that just
way out of left.
Field, you know, No, I think Netflix might still be
waiting in the wings. There's been so much vocal opposition
to the deal that I think many observers might think
there's some chance of getting it blocked. I would say
that when you really dive into the nitty gritty, it
just doesn't really raise clear cut or slam dunk antitrust
issues that a judge can easily rule on against the companies.
Netflix may be waiting in the wings, but I do
say Netflix has a bigger problem than Paramount on the
anti trust because they are so big in streaming, so
adding on HBO Max would probably be a problem for Netflix.
And in our last minute, Jen, what other antitrust cases
do you potentially see coming down the pike? That could
pit States against the Justice Department. What's on your radar?
Well, you know, I'm really mostly watching the litigation that's
ongoing now with respect to Nextstar and Live Nation. What
I think could happen down the road. We have these
really big anti trust lawsuits against Apple and against Amazon.
Amazon is the ftc, Apple is the United States Department
of Justice, and if they follow the patterns that have
been occurring since President Trump was reelected, there's some chance
those cases could settle. So my question there would be,
will the States go on in those two cases, one
against Apple, one against Amazon, or either one as they
did in Live Nation if the federal anti trust enforces
decide to settle. So that's a little bit down the road, though.
We're looking more into twenty twenty seven for activity in
those cases. But I'm watching those all right.
Well, it never stops, doesn't It doesn't. Thank you for
this jet again, really great having you on with us.
That's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Litigation analyst Jennifer Rae And up next,
we're going to look at some travel options this summer
with Nicki Eckstein and Chris Rouser of Bloomberg Pursuits. It's
thirty seven minutes past the hour. I'm Nathan Hager, and
this is Bloomberg. Thank you so much for joining us
for the special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US markets are
closed for the Juneteenth holiday. I'm Nathan Hager, and we
are just days away from the official start of summer,
so we thought this would be a kind of a
good time to think about travel. Many of us are
getting ready to head out for vacations if we haven't already,
but this year is different than most. The war in
the Middle East has driven up gas, oil and jet
fuel prices for more. We're pleased to welcome from Bloomberg Pursuits,
Nikki Eckstein and Chris Rouser. Great to have the both
of you with us. So while we think about travel,
because you know, a lot of the airlines even as
the war has been underway, we're predicting this summer was
going to be busy, Nikki, are is that what we're
seeing play out right now?
You know, people are not really willing to cut back
on travel this summer. There's data showing that sixty six
percent of people are still spending more on their trips,
even if forty three percent of them are using their
savings in order to do that. So definitely, people are
still very much hitting the road near, far and everything
in between.
Is it just the road or are we expecting, Chris,
that the airports are going to be packed no matter
what time of the summer this.
Is, the airports are going to be chaotic. And yes,
we expect that airports are going to be packed. People
are going to be flying and you know, people are
putting a lot of trips on credit cards. People are
building in extra time to be in airports. The dwell
time in airports has gone up over the past few years,
and people are know that there might be chaos, so
they show up early, they do some shopping, they eat it,
they eat some restaurants, and they just they give themselves
more wiggle room.
So let's talk about you know, you mentioned how people
are paying for travel with credit cards more this year, Nikki.
Is there still a big need for travel points or
are people sort of dipping into those credit cards to
get their trips off the ground.
Here.
Oh, absolutely so. The use of rewards to pay for
your travel is up eight hundred and twenty percent this summer, wow,
which is a wild figure. I mean, we always have
known that people love to use points and miles in
order to get what they call free trips. Whether it's
really free or not, you and I can just you know,
we can debate that. But there's also a lot more
tools out there to help you make better use of
your points and miles. There's a lot more services that
are popping up to make sure that if you book,
for instance, a flight on points and that cost of
the flight goes down in some kind of weird miracle,
you can get automatically rebooked to make sure that you're
not leaving miles on the table. The same is true
for hotels. So I think people are getting very wise
to those tools and trying to be very smart about
how they use this currency that is more valuable than
ever this summer. I would say, if that's something that
you want to do, there's a website called Gondola for hotels.
It automatically rebooks you when you're when your price drops
if that should happen. And there's a couple also for
for points and miles when you're booking flights. We've got
a whole list of these, but point dot me and
seats dot arrow are the two that really stand out.
Well, I can't think of how many times I've been
in coach and you know, heard from the flight attendant
passing around the credit card application for their loyalty credit
card and the points you can get. Chris, do those
kind of offers still make sense these days?
Yeah?
I mean people, you know, the airline are basically miles
and rewards companies. That's where they make all their money,
and their strategy is oriented towards that. But something that
we learned from Brian Kelly, the points guy, is actually
that you should the best rewards come from getting like
a multi brand card, so like you Chase Saphire Reward
or an American Express Card Platinum card. Those gives you
the give you the more broad points that you can
use on lots of different things, and they're transferable. I
am like a Delta loyalist and so I am addicted
to my Delta Platinum card and but that really locks
me in with Delta, and actually the benefits on other
cards that have points and miles that you know you
get three dollars for for gas purchases or grocery store purchases,
that kind of stuff actually can be better.
Yeah, I'm going to be admitting a little bit of
something here. When I book tickets, often I try to
get the you know, the lowest economy rate that I
possibly can, you know, just to get the cheapest rate.
But when it comes to things like being able to rebook,
does it make more sense now to try to pay
up for that higher tier just in case your plans change?
Nikki, Well, certainly there's two ways to approach that question.
There's the question of refundable bookings, where you can pay
a little bit more. You know, it's a sliding scale
cost to get a refundable either a plane ticket or
hotel room, where you're not necessarily committed upfront to a
locked in cost. You can always, you know, decide if
your plans change, somebody get sick, the geopolitical situation evolves,
you can make a change no matter what. The other
way is to pursue something called cancel for any reason.
Travel insurance. It can be a bit expensive. Sometimes it
goes up to like fifteen percent of your total travel cost,
and you have to sign up for these policies like
immediately after booking your flights and hotels. You can't really
delay between when you book your trip and you book
your travel insurance. So those are the two things that
exist to protect you from all of the different factors
that might change your plans. I would price compare. There's
a website called square mouth that helps you compare the
price of various insurance policies and providers so that you
can kind of just look side by side at what
you're getting and what it costs. And I would do
that next to your airfare search that shows you what
a non refundable ticket looks like versus a refundable ticket.
Yeah, I kind of bring issues up because I'm sure
I'm not the only traveler who's thinking about ways to
try to save money here and there, just because you know,
there are so many fees nowadays as well, and you
think about the bankruptcy of Spirit Airlines and a lot
of commentary that maybe that was going to have an
effect on pricing power for airlines as well. So, Chris,
do you see any of this sort of deterring people
or having them rethink how they're booking their travel this summer?
I mean a lot of the airlines are really focused
on the higher end of their travelers, so they break
up the there's like elite tier, you know, there's the
first class, there's you know, the second class, there's third class,
and then they and then they have actually lowered what
the bottom economy tier is. So like some airlines have
a basic economy where you really got to look at
what you what you're signing up for because it is
the cheapest fair but you can't make changes, you don't
get to pick your seat. You know, there's no check bags.
So what we used to think of as sort of
the floor of what you have, the grace that you
kept during traveling, actually they found a way to sort
of remove even some of that, so you know, paying
a little bit for the additional perks actually kind of
only gets you to where you sort of assumed we
were at base level.
Before speaking with Chris Rouser and Nikki k Stein of
Bloomberg Pursuits, as we start to think about summer travel season,
we've talked about, you know, some of the ways we
can try to save money here, let's talk about where
we can go now to put that money to you.
So I want to start with you, Nikki, what are
some of the best places to go this summer? Just
if you're looking for value.
If you're looking for value, then it's less about where
you go than about how you go. Bear with me
on this one. Okay, I am not a cruiser personally,
no offense to all of the many many people who are,
but it is not my usual preferred style travel. That said,
this is the summer where even if you're like me,
you might consider a cruise. There are more high end
options than have ever existed before. There are a lot
of hotel lines that have introduced yacht like sailing products
on small ships. We're talking about a couple hundred passengers
at most on a ship. These are not like floating megacities.
And while the rates seem expensive on the surface, we're
talking about maybe six hundred to one thousand dollars a
night per room. If you compare that to what you
get on land in the most popular places in Europe
or in the Mediterranean, where a lot of these ships
are sailing, the value is actually mismatched in a way
that's really really pealing to cruisers, especially when you think
about food being built in. Some of your excursions may
be built in. Some of the on ship amenities, for sure,
are built in. You're getting a much better deal for
what is now a comparable product in terms of luxury. Certainly,
trains are another thing that we don't think about quite
so much. I was looking at a route on the
Rocky Mountaineer in Canada, which hits a bunch of beautiful
national parks as well as cities going all you know,
from east to west across the lower border of Canada basically,
and you can get away with paying five hundred dollars
a day, which on land is a really tricky ceiling
at this point to break.
Well, I got to admit, you know, across transcontinental train
trip is one of those bucket list items for me
for sure, and it gets you thinking about, you know,
whether all inclusive is a better option this summer than
you know, maybe you know, going to a luxury hotel
and then you know, separating the flight that sort of thing. Chris,
does all inclusive make more sense this summer than it
has in the past.
You know, all inclusive has sort of been a little
bit of a family secret and maybe like a bachelorette
party or spring break secret. But yeah, in some cases,
you know a lot of booking through a tour company
that creates everything for you, working with a travel agent
who can actually find you a package deal. Working with
a human who can sort of steer you to something
where all the costs are built in actually can be
a real plus, and people don't always think of it.
It like cruising, working on a package tour all inclusive
thing can get a bad rep, but actually what we
think of from twenty thirty years ago, in terms of
the level of amenities and the food for example, actually
can be quite cheap.
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, Chris, because
so many travelers these days are probably booking their trips
through artificial intelligence. Vicky, does it really make more sense
to still work with a travel agent than to let
the chatbot do it for you?
You know what a lot of people don't realize is
that it doesn't cost you anything to work with a
travel agent almost you know, ten out of ten times,
the cost of a travel agent is not passed on
to the consumer. It's actually passed on to your hotel
or different providers along the way, who pay commission to
the travel agent for their services, not the traveler themselves.
And what the traveler gets out of this is a
backup policy. It's a safety net if anything should go
wrong on your trip, if your flight is canceled if
you know, whether it gets in your way, whatever it
may be. And we know how hard it is to
avoid anything going wrong on your travels. These days, you
have a real human in your pocket who is really
well hooked up to help you out and get you
out of trouble in that exact moment. I've been caught
in really tricky situations in the last couple of months,
and I've been so thankful to have a real human
to call who can rebook my flights, you know, whatever
it might be. Gosh, it makes a huge difference.
So just to close this out, Chris, when it comes
to you know, sort of out of the radar destinations,
places you might want to go to just to avoid
the crowds that you talked about that there are going
to be at the airports this summer. What are you
thinking about?
We have some great recommendations. Nikki in the BusinessWeek section
of Pursuits did a whole summer travel package which has
some really great ideas. One of my favorite stories was
one that a writer named Paul Richardson did about Extremadura,
which is in Spain. It's in southwestern Spain. You're Portugal
and it's this mountainous region, beautiful towns and incredible culture,
new museums, great luxury hotels. I've been to Spain a
bunch of times. I lived there for a while, and
I had never been there myself, and you know, when
you go to Madrid, Barcelona, a lot of those places
are quite crowded now because everyone has sort of, you know,
woken up to the beauties of Spain and the amazing food,
and so finding places that feel really authentic but also
not really overrun is very special. And Extremodora has some
really beautiful towns that are really great to visit and
not packed.
So great to get these summer travel ideas from the
both of you. Thanks so much for being with us.
That is Nicky Eckstein and Chris Rouser of Bloomberg Pursuits.
We'd also like to thank Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer ree Man,
Deep Sing and honorog Run. Of course, thanks to you
as well for joining us on this holiday. I'm Nathan Hager.
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