Episode summary
Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 3rd, 2026 | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · 45 min · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec
Summary
The holiday-weekend edition focused on summer travel, food, pools, and reading, but it also kept circling back to how data and taste shape consumer behavior. The first segment highlighted AllTrails CEO Liz Hamron and Bloomberg Pursuits editor Adam Thompson, who discussed how hiking app users are using reviews, offline maps, and route-planning tools to avoid crowded national park trailheads. They argued that the biggest parks are still drawing huge crowds, so the app’s value is in helping people find less obvious alternatives and better timing.
The show then turned to the business of hospitality and leisure. Ruthie Rogers described how The River Cafe builds its identity around hospitality, seasonal menus, and the stories people bring to the table, while Sean Gad explained why Latham Group is pushing fiberglass pools in the South and Sun Belt markets. He said pool demand is tied both to new-home incentives and to a faster installation process that can take about six days for fiberglass versus months for concrete.
The final interview featured novelist Teddy Wayne, whose new book The Opair follows a middle-aged Brooklyn writer whose life is disrupted by a young Norwegian au pair. Wayne said he writes about ambition, money, status, and the anxieties of modern life, and he sees fiction as a way to make readers put down their phones and question their assumptions.
Key takeaways
- Liz Hamron said AllTrails has over 100 million members and uses more than 50 million reviews and 100 million photos to guide hikers.
- Adam Thompson said their national-park package uses anonymized trail data, ratings, weather patterns, and crowd levels to steer travelers away from the busiest routes.
- Sean Gad said fiberglass pools make up 25% of the U.S. market and can be installed in about six days, a key selling point in warm-weather states.
- Sean Gad said the average North American pool costs about $95,000, with prices ranging from roughly $70,000 to $200,000 depending on upgrades.
- Teddy Wayne said he writes about the American pursuit of more money, more sex, and more status, and how that ambition can become self-destructive.
Notable quotes
“the top 10 trails in any national park tend to get about 50% of the traffic that we see”
“our mission is to help the world find its way outside”
“we want really people to come to your restaurant and leave I always say quite simply happier than when they arrived”
“the average in North America across North America is $95,000”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. — This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio.
Hi everyone. Welcome to a holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week and happy 4th of July. It is of course a big one.
It's the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And while many of us are taking some time to unplug, there were some big stories this past week that we should point out. Consequential decisions from the US Supreme Court, peace talks to end the US and Iran war continuing and a big read on the US economy with the US monthly jobs report out just before heading into the long holiday weekend.
And we wrapped up the second quarter in the first half of the trading year with the S&P 500 having its best quarter going back to 2020 and semiconductor stocks having their best quarter ever. You can read all about the market action at bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg terminal. For us this hour, we are leaning fully into the summer season.
Why not?
Yeah, we are. — It's hot outside. — It's official, man. It is official. — Be careful outside. It is really hot. — Well, on that, we kick it off by hitting the trails. All Trail CEO Liz Hamron joins us to talk about the massive boom in outdoor recreation and how technology is changing the way that we navigate the great outdoors. There's a little tension there, right? You brought this up.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- business news
- finance
- global technology
- politics
- economics
Watch the episode
Watch “Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 3rd, 2026 | Bloomberg Businessweek” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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