| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the upside of risk-taking behavior of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here. What’s the worst vacation you’ve ever had? I polled my workmates and we came up with: Getting hit by an earthquake in Costa Rica; a dune buggy conking out in the Utah desert in mid-summer; having booked your homebound flight from Puerto Rico on 9/11; driving three hours from the rental when you remember you left biscuits baking in the oven; [1] fighting through this madding crowd at Ellis Island: [2]  Photographer: Dave Lee A century ago, the authorities there were more coldly efficient at crowd control:  Source: Fotosearch via Getty Images Anyway, here’s the winner: “Disastrous trip to Spain involving all of the following: ATM card stuck in the machine; pickpocketed of passport and all the cash I'd subsequently been wired to tide me over until the end of the trip; getting separated from the group and lost in the city, pre-cell phone era; contracting norovirus.” (Yeah, we buried the lede with that one.) [3] Still, I don’t think it tops my own Spanish adventure: a train derailment! Yep, as our electric train zoomed across the Andalusian desert during a massive thunderstorm, a flash flood took out a section of track ahead of us, we went off the rails, burrowed into an embankment, and flipped over far enough that we ended up on the ceiling — just like The Poseidon Adventure. (But without Shelley Winters, and we really could have used her underwater breath-holding abilities for the next part.) Of course, I was the hero! Hanging from the luggage rack, I managed to kick out a window large enough for everybody to climb out. (Actually, the real hero was my college roommate, who carried an elderly English couple through that escape hatch.) So, everything’s good right? Except we are standing in several feet of floodwater and, um, did I mention IT WAS AN ELECTRIC TRAIN?! The impact had dragged down stanchions holding the power cables, leading to a hellscape of sparks, smoke and detonations, followed by a mad swimming scramble for dry ground — basically a freestyle race against the third rail. [4] But there’s a happy ending. Somehow, nobody died, although there were plenty of fractures and concussions and burns and folks in shock. The crash was loud enough to attract some local villagers, who loaded us into pickups and took us to their town hall, which was also a disco! So we drank, danced and ended up on the front page of El País the next day. [5] I guess the lesson here might be: Never go to Spain. Or, more likely: Never travel with opinion journalists. But as Lionel Laurent notes, the Spaniards themselves have a sweet deal, while the French may actually have to do some work. “There’s been only one topic of conversation in the brasseries of France this week: Prime Minister Francois Bayrou’s proposal to scrap two of three public holidays in the month of May to contain the spiraling budget deficit In the land of the 35-hour work week, this is tantamount to treason,” Lionel writes. “The outrage is a little overdone. Knocking off two public holidays would leave the French with nine, which looks positively Germanic — until you add their 25 paid vacation days, which gets France in almost the same ballpark as Spain.” So, yeah, Spaniards get a lot of days off but, based on my experience, will be lucky if they come back unscathed.  They, and everybody else, might want to wait a couple months before heading to the beach, suggests Chris Bryant. “For a growing number of holidaymakers, the rational response to the intense heat, high prices and overcrowding that blight the Mediterranean in July and August is to visit in the spring or fall. After all, the weather is cooler, hotels are better value and the vibe is more relaxed,” writes Chris. “This so-called ‘shoulder season’ travel is booming. The trend could help ameliorate overtourism while boosting the use of aircraft and accommodation during the normally fallow winter months. But this rebalancing won’t happen without a coordinated industry effort to keep resorts open and highlight the attractions of off-peak travel. Oh, and more flexible school holidays would also help.”  OK, let’s say you want to ignore Chris’s advice and get baked, broiled and fried right now. Welp, if you are a parent hoping to keep Secrets, slip into Sandals or sail with Virgins, there is the age-old question: “What are we going to do with the kids?” Why, ship them off to get poison ivy, heat rash and bullied by bigger kids, of course. “We live in a world of constant, relentless change, but summer camp is one of those rituals that has survived, largely intact, for over a century. That’s because our conviction that children should have time to ‘unplug,’ make new friends, learn a skill or simply reconnect with nature is nothing new — which is not the same as saying it’s always been that way,” writes Stephen Mihm. “In fact, for much of the nation’s history, most kids spent their summers working in the fields and factories with their parents. Times change, though, and so did ideas about childrearing, ushering in what one historian has described as the ‘invention of childhood.’ ” Stephen notes that first private camps catered to White, affluent Protestant families in the urban northeast. We can safely assume that none of the kids in those pens at Ellis Island spent their childhoods eating Nobu sushi at Camp Takajo. But the worst vacation idea ever is not camp: it’s a birthday party with Coldplay. However, if Chris Martin’s your jam, some advice: Avoid the kiss cam, especially if you’re kissing someone other than your spouse. “There’s a reason CEOs who are smart people do dumb things and end up in [Astronomer CEO Andy Byron’s] position. As I’ve written before, power can make people believe they will only ever reap the upsides of risk-taking behavior,” writes Beth Kowitt. “For example, people with a higher sense of power are more likely to believe they’ll avoid hitting turbulence on an airplane or running into a dangerous snake on vacation. One can see how they might also think they won’t be spotted on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert, despite the evidence to the contrary.” Spotted at a Coldplay concert? Yeesh, I’d rather get back on that electric train. Bonus Mystery Train Reading: What’s the World Got in Store ? - Fed rate decision, July 30: Fed Legend Paul Volcker Would Shrug Over This Attack — Christine Harper
- Apple, Samsung earnings, July 31: A $2,000 Foldable iPhone Can Take the Heat Off Tim Cook — Dave Lee
- US Jobs report, Aug. 1: Andreessen Is Wrong About DEI and the Working Class — Ronald Brownstein
Given the Coldplaygate saga, tech moguls might have to show more caution in their leisure time — dodging kiss-cams, foam cannons, inflatable crocodiles and the like. But do they really have to ruin vacation for the rest of us? Unsurprisingly, AI tools are creating winners and losers through feedback loops that send us all to the same tourist sites, restaurants and 9th-century piazzas with giant images of … tech moguls. “Given that AI systems are predominantly trained on English-language text, this can also mean that local gems easily slip through the cracks of training data,” writes Catherine Thorbecke. “Before the rise of these tools, social media was already reshaping travel in Asia — sometimes in bizarre ways. There’s a railroad crossing in my neighborhood that an influencer posted on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu and is now constantly inundated with people doing photoshoots.” Catherine adds: “As AI applications proliferate, more people are turning to them to plan vacations from Barcelona to New Orleans” but there are “inherent limitations to the data they’re trained on. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to put the phone down and ask a local for their top spots.” If your AI agent is sending you to railroad crossings or Barcelona, I recommend taking a crash helmet. Note: Please send vacation nightmares and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. |
