Crypto News: That sunset view will cost you

Perhaps the return of daylight saving time this past weekend has you dreaming about longer summer days and vacations. Stacey Vanek Smith writes today about a potential dark cloud over prices at popular attractions. Plus: The US's natural gas power play, the man in charge of some of the happiest places on Earth and the troubles for Germany's political center. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Surge pricing has been seeping into more and more aspects of life. Loved by economists for its efficiency—and generally hated by the public—the strategy of using technology to quickly charge more to meet demand is coming for your next vacation.

New York City's Empire State Building announced last month that it's moving to a dynamic pricing model for tickets to its observation decks. Algorithms will adjust the cost (similar to Uber pricing) based on interest.

"It's designed to monetize high-demand times through the day," Tony Malkin, the chief executive officer of the Empire State Realty Trust, said on a call with investors. Tickets to visit the top of the building already start at about $80, with visitors paying almost $20 more as a "sunset tax" for a prime photo opportunity. The pricing range under the new plan isn't clear, and Empire State Realty Trust declined to comment.

Ticket prices already had London-based photographer Tom Filipe, 25, and his parents in an Empire state of sticker shock when they were visiting a few weeks ago. "It's my dad's first time in New York, and he really wanted to visit the Empire State Building," Filipe said. "But the tickets are like $100 per person? Everything is already so expensive in New York."

Dynamic pricing tends to stir up even more strong feelings. Bruce Springsteen got a lot of blowback when he let Ticketmaster use the model to sell tickets to a recent tour (resulting in prices as high as $5,000 a seat). When Wendy's announced plans to try dynamic pricing last year, customer response was so frosty that the fast-food chain quickly backed down.

Academics, on the other hand, love this kind of thing. Pricing economist Rafi Mohammed, author of The Art of Pricing, even advised his dentist to start doing it. "Economists get very frustrated when they see a 'sold out' sign," Mohammed says. "They think, 'You should just raise the price.'" In the case of the Empire State Building observatory, tickets frequently sell out.

The concept is that the higher price will filter out the people who don't value the experience as much, leaving space for those who really, really want to get that perfect skyline selfie, or to watch The Boss belt out Thunder Road, or to buy their Dave's Combo at peak lunch hour.

The Empire State Building also offers express passes, tours and a wedding proposal package. Photographer: John Lamparski/Getty Images

For businesses, dynamic pricing can help navigate costs in a tough economy: The Empire State Building gets roughly 8,000 visitors a day, but that's about 25% fewer than before the Covid-19 pandemic. With international relations between the US and other countries cooling, it's very possible that the number of international visitors will drop significantly this year. For any company counting on tourism, that could spell disaster.

Higher ticket prices can provide a cushion. Last year, Empire State Realty Trust brought in more money from its observatory than it had in 2019, despite the lower attendance numbers.

Resistance to dynamic pricing is futile, Mohammed says, with everyone from airlines to Airbnb to Amazon.com using it. There's an upside for customers, too, he says: very low prices at off-peak times. On, say, a sleety Wednesday in March, the Empire State Building could offer deeply discounted tickets and draw visitors who couldn't afford $80. Think of it like a happy hour (albeit a cold and wet one).

Of course, tourists can't plan on a break like that. Filipe and his parents had only a few days in New York, and the Empire State Building prices ultimately proved too much. When I asked about dynamic pricing, Felipe said he would prefer to see tickets sold out for the day than available at prices that were completely out of reach. "If it was sold out, I'd take it as a sign," he said. "Like, 'Oh, it was not meant to be. I'll go another time.'"

But the $100 ticket price left Felipe with a bad taste in his mouth. "I was kind of angry. Like, 'Wow, why is it so expensive?'" he said. "Surely there's a cheaper rooftop." That was, in fact, the case. Felipe and his parents traveled 16 blocks uptown to the observation deck at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Tickets were $40 per person, or $50 around sunset.

"It was probably one of the best views I've ever seen," Felipe saids. "The sky was just completely orange with these pink tones, and we were lucky enough to be facing the Empire State Building as the lights came on, which was really magical." The family got their iconic moment after all.

In Brief

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Natural Gas Gives Trump New Leverage

Ripping up old alliances and turning the post-World War II axis on its head would have been impossible for any previous American president because of the insatiable US thirst for imported energy. But the Trump White House is able to lean on an increasingly critical made-in-America commodity to exert new levels of geopolitical leverage: liquefied natural gas.

The US, which in the span of about seven years transformed itself from an irrelevant supplier of LNG into the world's largest, is set to expand its production capacity by 60% in the first half of Donald Trump's second presidency, according to an estimate from BloombergNEF. By the end of the decade, almost 1 in every 3 tankers carrying the superchilled fuel will originate in the US, giving Trump his best chance to attain the energy dominance his campaign promised.

No matter what Trump does to alienate the US from its allies, his unorthodox moves aren't hurting demand for American-made natural gas. In the first weeks of his second presidency, he sought to broker a peace deal for Ukraine without key allies (or Ukraine), slapped tariffs on trade partners and pitched a bombastic idea to remake the Middle East. Leaders from Europe, India and Japan have responded with pledges to buy more American gas. "It's mind-blowing to think that the president of the United States doesn't have to worry about imported energy when negotiating for peace in the Middle East or on the European continent," says Amy Myers Jaffe, a professor at New York University who teaches about energy and climate finance. "You can lead those discussions from a position of power."

Kevin Crowley and Ruth Liao write about the diplomatic shift: How Natural Gas Became America's Most Important Export

Epic Times Ahead for Disney Parks Chief

Josh D'Amaro. Photographer: Jessica Pons for Bloomberg Businessweek

If you don't stop for candy or merch, the walk along Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A., from the entrance gates up to Sleeping Beauty's Castle, should take about five minutes. Late in the afternoon on March 4, Josh D'Amaro, the chair of Walt Disney Co.'s parks division, needs at least 10. It's not that the guy isn't spry—he just has some selfies to take. D'Amaro doesn't get stopped for photos nearly as often as Mickey or Minnie, but to a certain breed of Disney adult, he's a recognizable character himself. On this particular Tuesday, the conversations that passersby strike up range from their favorite rides to the absolute best spots for family portraits. "These fans are so passionate," D'Amaro remarks a few minutes later, once out of earshot from the people who've shared their stories. "I love it."

Long before he was running the company's parks, cruises and consumer-product teams—totaling roughly 180,000 people, or about 4 in 5 Disney workers—D'Amaro was a fan, too. He vividly recalls his first visit to the park as a boy, when Peter Pan's Flight, which suspends visitors over the island of Neverland, made him feel like he was flying. When his kids were little, he tried to give them a taste of that feeling on the ride Soarin'. More recently he's tried to sprinkle a similar bit of pixie dust throughout his stretch of the Disney empire, a remit that's expanded rapidly over the past several years.

Thomas Buckley goes on a walk with D'Amaro, one of the leading candidates to take over from Disney CEO Bob Iger: Disney's Parks Chief Sees Fortnite as Key to Its Future

The Roots of Germany's Dysfunction

Photographer: Bee Furlong for Bloomberg Businessweek. Prop Stylist: Emma Ringness

It was September 2024, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz was wrapping up a series of town-hall-style meetings across Germany. Popular discontent over bickering politicians and a sputtering economy was widespread and would eventually lead to the collapse of the three-way governing coalition he presided over. Scholz was canvassing the country in a last-ditch effort to revamp his image as an aloof and ineffective leader.

At the final stop of the charm offensive in Berlin, the chancellor was confronted by a soft-spoken child-care worker who asked why the members of the ruling alliance were behaving like a bunch of cranky toddlers. Rather than attempt to push back or deflect, Scholz said the criticism was fair and invited the man to recommend a fix, adding with a grin that he was "asking for a friend."

The incident demonstrated that the government's dysfunction had become apparent to just about everyone. The country responded in the Feb. 23 election by calling for drastic changes, with one in three voters opting for the political fringe.

Mainstream parties have stoked further uncertainty in the messy weeks since the election, bypassing public debate to suddenly abandon the country's tradition of austerity, in the name of rearming and shoring up creaky infrastructure. Germans have once again been left wondering "who are we and where are we going."

Chris Reiter and William Wilkes write about the unease in a column adapted from their book Broken Republik. Keep reading: Germany Is Suffering an Identity Crisis 80 Years in the Making

Monetizing MAGA

1789

That's the name of the investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is seeking to profit off his father's vision for America. At a time when businesses big and small are trying to navigate the president's orders and policies, Trump Jr.'s stamp of approval can mean the difference between access to lucrative opportunities—such as an in at Elon Musk's xAI and SpaceX—or a cold shoulder.

Friction Between Friends

"We're not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play."

Adam Boehler

US envoy for hostages

Rare tensions are surfacing between Israel and President Donald Trump's administration, after the US engaged in direct negotiations with Hamas about hostages in Gaza, including an American national.