A massive fire tore through a Dominican Republic resort and forced 1,700 tourists to evacuate. One Italian national died. The rest got a story they'll tell at dinner parties for the next fifteen years while everyone checks their phones.
The resort burned. Completely. Gone. Seventeen hundred people had to leave their rooms in the middle of what was supposed to be an all-inclusive vacation where the biggest risk was food poisoning from the buffet. Instead they got actual danger. Refunds pending.
Someone died. An Italian national, authorities said, which is the phrasing you use when you want to sound official but haven't released a name yet. The other 1,699 tourists are now split between people who feel guilty for complaining about their ruined vacation and people who are already drafting their one-star reviews.
Here's what retail traders are doing right now: searching for the resort's parent company ticker so they can short hospitality stocks. Because if there's one thing a tragic fire teaches us, it's that someone should profit from it. They'll lose money anyway. The S&P will hit another all-time high tomorrow and they'll still be underwater on their puts.
The resort is destroyed. The building's gone. The vacation's over. Travel insurance companies are about to get very creative with their definitions of covered events. Force majeure sounds better in legal documents than sorry your resort burned down while you were at the swim-up bar.
Seventeen hundred people evacuated safely, minus one. They're alive, which is the absolute lowest bar for a successful vacation, and yet somehow they still paid full price.
Photo by Simone Dinoia on Unsplash
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