IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

PAVED

WHAT’S INSIDE:

Feature: A Bumper Winter Travel Season Is Underway
Consumer Tech: Record Holiday Retail, Gemini 3, Alexa Fire TV AI Search
Arts + Culture: ISP Piracy, Zootopia 2, Megan Thee Stallion, Bad Bunny
Food Tech: Ultra-processed Foods, Starbucks Case, Amazon 30-Min Delivery
Sports Tech: Super Bowl LX, Netflix Premier League, Big League Wiffle Ball
Futurism: TSA REAL ID, Mars Lightning & Microbial Life, Helium-3 Mining
Health Tech: WHO Endorses GLP-1, Eli Lilly Cuts price, Samsung Ultrasound

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PAVED

CONSUMER TECH:

Holiday Retail — Black Friday hit a record $11.8B in online sales, up 9% y-o-y and Cyber Monday hit a record $13.3B in sales, surpassing Black Friday. 54.8% of purchases were mobile, with BNPL at a concerningly high $1B.

DeepSeek's AI Leap — DeepSeek unveils GPT-5-level reasoning models and an open-source AI math Model achieving gold-level scores at the IMO

Amazon — Alexa Plus AI allows users to find specific movie scenes by conversational search on Fire TV + launches AI-powered custom perfume fragrances.

Elevation Lab TimeCapsule — A compact AirTag case that uses AAA batteries to gain a 5-year tag lifespan to reduce replacements.

Bitwarden — A highly-rated password manager (used by NASA). Simple setup allows easy password import and autofill. Has zero-knowledge encryption, passkeys.

WEEKEND CRYPTOGRAM:

[Open Deal] Wyoming Decentralized Exchange — WYDE Cause Coins: Join the Waitlist before this $10T Impact Investing Infrastructure play launches late 2025 ».

Digital Festive Trends — Consumers are embracing AI, crypto and digital wallets this holiday season. Nearly half of Gen Z in the U.S. are excited about crypto gifts.

Yosemite National Park

FEATURE ARTICLE

Bumper Winter Travel Season Is Underway

TechBuzz Editorial

Winter 2025–26 is becoming one of the most active cold-season travel periods in recent memory. High-income US travelers are driving much of the momentum. They are booking earlier, spending more, and shaping their trips around experiences that feel purposeful. The market is responding with more curated itineraries, smarter digital planning tools, and higher quality service layers. This is a season built around intention, not impulse.

Demand Curve Rises As Temperatures Drop

Travel companies are reporting strong winter interest across almost every premium segment. Tripadvisor notes that 60% of global travelers plan a winter trip and that winter bookings are up about 45% year over year. More than half say they expect to spend more than last year, which tracks with rising US outbound enthusiasm.

Affluent travelers are playing an outsized role in this surge. Higher-end bookings skew longer, more flexible, and more experience focused. Many plan one or two trips across the season, with stays of five nights or more becoming common. The shift is meaningful. Longer trips create room for deeper cultural experiences, private guides, wellness programs, and the layered itineraries that luxury travelers expect.

Spending patterns are also widening. High net worth households are comfortable allocating more to premium lodging, private transport, VIP access, and tech-enabled concierge services. Companies offering these layers report faster booking windows and strong demand for peak dates. New Year’s week remains the most expensive period of the season, with some destinations seeing increases of 8% to 15%, but many travelers are adjusting their timing rather than scaling back.

The Hot Spots This Cold Season

The familiar anchors still dominate the upper end of the market. New York City, London, and Orlando continue to attract holiday travelers willing to pay for location and atmosphere. Warm-weather favorites also remain strong. Cancun, Key West, Las Vegas, and top Mexican beach resorts are seeing some of their heaviest early winter demand in years.

A growing share of high-income travelers are exploring secondary destinations. Smaller ski towns, design-forward desert escapes, and low-key California beaches like Hermosa Beach are gaining traction. These locations offer authenticity with high comfort. They also offer better availability for private chefs, wellness practitioners, and guided experiences that struggle to scale in major hubs.

Roughly one third of travelers say they are deliberately seeking new places this winter. That creates opportunities for destinations that invest in storytelling, cultural access, and premium local partnerships. Luxury travel advisors are noting increased interest in places that balance privacy with culture. These include arts-centered mountain towns, heritage coastal communities, and digital nomad friendly outposts.

Experiences First. Logistics Second.

The most striking pattern across surveys is the dominance of experiences in shaping travel choices. About 93% of travelers say activities are essential to their budget. Roughly 84% say they prioritize organized experiences on winter trips. High-income travelers amplify this trend, because they often design their itineraries around the activities rather than the accommodation.

This winter’s most requested experiences share a few threads. Travelers want meaningful contact with place, access to nature, and the feeling of insight. Cultural tours, architecture cruises, winery days, canyon excursions, and night-sky experiences are among the most commonly booked. The premium versions of these offerings are evolving fast. Private access, after-hours tours, small-group formats, and expert-led sessions are now the standard for many households.

Younger affluent travelers add another layer. Millennials and Gen Z with high income lean toward immersive, adventurous, and social activities. They want community as much as comfort. Gen X and Boomers tilt toward warmth, wellness, and easy movement, which keeps spa resorts, curated winter sun itineraries, and discreet service models in high demand.

Business, Tech, and Leisure Converge

The work and travel boundary continues to soften at the upper end of the market. More than one third of winter travelers globally plan to work remotely at least part of the time. High-net-worth travelers turn this into an advantage. They are using winter trips to host small strategy sessions, creative retreats, and deep-work periods supported by strong connectivity.

Properties that cater to this group are investing in advanced digital setups, meeting-grade bandwidth, and AI supported concierge tools. Several premium brands now offer digital trip planning built on predictive tech that recommends activities, dining, and local events based on stated preferences and real-time availability.

What This Means for Winter Travel 2025–26

Travelers at the high end are shaping the season in three major ways. They are spending more and booking earlier. They are extending trips to create space for both leisure and productivity. They are choosing destinations based on the richness of experiences rather than the volume of amenities.

The result is a winter with unusually strong momentum. Providers that can deliver curated experiences, remote-work-ready environments, and high touch personalization are best positioned for the season ahead. Travelers who plan early and build experience led itineraries will see the biggest returns.

Cameron vs AI

ARTS & CULTURE

Supreme Court Piracy Case — Supreme Court weighs whether ISPs like Cox are liable for user piracy, with a potential $1B penalty reshaping copyright enforcement.

Cameron vs AI — James Cameron calls generative AI "horrifying" for filmmaking, raising concerns about job security and championing human-centered creativity.

Megan Thee Stallion Defamation Win — Megan Thee Stallion secures $75k in damages against blogger Milagro Gramz, spotlighting online harassment's mental health impact.

Zootopia Record — Zootopia 2 sets the highest international box office takings for animation at $556M, becoming 2025's top opener despite a weak theatrical year.

Eurovision Exodus — Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia will boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest over Israel's participation and the Gaza conflict.

Bad Bunny Takes the Crown — Bad Bunny is Spotify's most-played artist in 2025, with over 19.8B streams, passing Taylor Swift. His new album leads global streams.

Starbucks Protests

FOOD & DRINK TECH:

San Fran v UPFs — San Francisco sues major ultraprocessed food manufacturers, linking products to $100B in healthcare costs and comparing tactics to Big Tobacco.

Amazon Now Delivery — Amazon Now tests 30-min delivery in Seattle and Philly using smaller fulfillment centers, targeting quick-commerce with Prime pricing.

AI Chocolate — Barry Callebaut partners with NotCo AI to accelerate chocolate recipe development, enhancing formulation speed and focusing on healthy foods.

Starbucks Settles — Starbucks settles $35M to over 15k NYC workers on unstable schedule claims, including $3.4M in penalties for Fair Workweek compliance.

Chinese Chains Expand to US — Brand like Heytea and Wallace bring cheese foam drinks and fried chicken sandwiches to the U.S., adapting to local tastes.

Beanless Brew — Atomo crafts coffee without beans using upcycled ingredients for skin and gut health. Caffeine prices jumped 41% to $9.14 p/lb due to poor harvests.

Healthy Eating Bubs — Little Spoon offers organic meal prep for babies and toddlers with high nutritional quality and low toxin meals, snacks, and smoothies.

Brandi Carlile

SPORTS & TECH DESK:

Super Bowl LX — Brandi Carlile, Charlie Puth, and Coco Jones will headline the Super Bowl LX pregame show on Feb 8 in Santa Clara.

Netflix Eyes Premier League — Netflix considers bidding for Premier League TV rights post-UEFA Champions League loss with NBC's US deal ending in 2028 and rising rights values.

World Rugby & Emirates Soar — World Rugby has extended its partnership with Emirates until 2035, marking the first record-breaking deal platinum partnership.

Rams' Training Facility Dispute — The LA Rams legal battle over purchasing their former Earth City training facility for $1M remains open following a ruling and the team's $790M settlement with St. Louis.

Wiffle Big Leagues — Big League Wiffle Ball, founded by Logan Rose and backed by celebrities like Kevin Costner and Gary Vaynerchuk, aims to professionalize with future player salaries and signs of its potential growth.

Life on Mars

FUTURISM:

REAL ID Fee Takes Flight — Starting Feb 1, the TSA will impose a $45 fee on travelers without REAL ID-compliant identification. The charge covers a 10-day travel period. 94% of travelers present valid IDs.

Life on Mars — Machine learning is in use to detect microbial life signs in rocks from 3.3B years ago with 90%+ accuracy + NASA's Perseverance rover captures the first Mars lightning.

Suburban Nature — Sunbridge, a 27K-acre project near Orlando, aims to integrate nature into suburban living with 30k+ homes in the first Homegrown National Park Community.

Lunar Gold Rush — Helium-3, valued at $20M per kg, could revolutionize fusion power and quantum computing. Interlune plans to extract it by 2029 with NASA's Artemis Program.

Samsung Ultrasound

WELLBEING AND HEALTH TECH:

Vaccine Safety Debate — The FDA claims the Covid-19 vaccine caused 10 child deaths, sparking expert skepticism from both sides due to lacking data transparency.

WHO Endorses GLP-1 — The WHO recommends GLP-1 drugs for obesity, recognizing it as a treatable chronic disease, while noting the need for safety data.

Semaglutide's Dual Role — Anti-obesity drugs may reduce addiction by targeting brain pathways related to craving. Early clinical trials show promise.

Lilly Slashes — Eli Lilly cuts Zepbound prices by $50-$100, with new costs from $299 to $449. This aims to boost access amid cost hurdles, mirroring Novo Nordisk.

Samsung's AI Ultrasound — Samsung reveals the R20 Ultrasound System and over a dozen AI-powered diagnostic tools at RSNA 2025, rivaling GE and Philips.