Travel Prices Are Surging. Can Demand Keep Up?

0:22Seth Borko: The number of the week is 6 ,000. That is the number of people who have applied to become the new voice of Logan Airport in Boston. And we are going to talk a little bit more about that at the end of the pod today. So, Seth, you are not at home today. Where are you, my friend?

0:43Sarah Kopit: I'm in wonderful Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has got to be one of my favorite city names, town names in the world. It just rolls off the tongue. Albuquerque.

0:54Seth Borko: I just always think of Breaking Bad. No, I've never been. Yeah, I just watched a show that I liked a lot. But no, I've actually never been to that region of the United States of America.

1:06Sarah Kopit: This is my first time in New Mexico. I was just walking. I'm at a conference for AAA travel advisors. And this is just a totally shameless plug that if you do want Sarah or I to speak at your conference, that can in fact happen. It does in fact happen.

1:24Seth Borko: It does in fact happen.

1:26Sarah Kopit: They've been wonderful. AAA's been a wonderful host for me here. And we're in New Mexico. It's my first time in New Mexico. Sarah, I was walking down one of the roads and I saw a real life roadrunner. They're real. They exist. Yes.

1:42Seth Borko: No. Yes. How big are they? What do they look like? I've never thought of this, but.

1:47Sarah Kopit: They look kind of like mini. They look kind of like dinosaurs. I mean, they look like kind of really. if a turkey went on a zempic like it's a really svelte turkey is sort of what a roadrunner looks

1:59Seth Borko: like did you know immediately what it was i had a hunch and then other people were near me and

2:05Sarah Kopit: confirmed i was like is that i think that's a weird bird you know it but it was a roadrunner it was the roadrunner uh so that was my new i was really excited about that that's incredible

2:14Seth Borko: i'm very jealous the wild the wildlife one sees while on uh business trips yeah yeah definitely

2:22Sarah Kopit: more wildlife on this trip than usual. I mean, the Southwest is just a beautiful place. I've been to Arizona and Utah before, and I love it. And if you haven't been, Sarah, you should go. And now I've been to New Mexico, you should consider that as well.

2:35Seth Borko: Well, amazing. I didn't think we'd get to talk about Roadrunners today, so that was not on my bingo card. But we do have a full show today. We are in earnings season right now. We got a lot going on. We have JetBlue. We have all sorts of it. We're going to talk about Airbnb. They're doing all sorts of stuff out there that is much to the chagrin of at least part of its constituency. And we're going to talk about Boston, too. So where do you want to start? Where do you want to start, Seth? You know what?

3:10Sarah Kopit: Maybe we should start with, I just pulled together some data on the travel industry. I'm going to present it, actually, at this conference. And I thought to myself, I just did all the work. I'm about to present it. I should share it with the podcast audience as well. Is it okay if I talk through it a little bit? Awesome. Yeah. And then we can jump into earnings, which is the more newsy.

3:29Seth Borko: Yeah.

3:30Sarah Kopit: So, you know, I get asked to talk a lot. And we'd like to talk about the state of travel and what's happening in the travel economy. The word I always use is resilient, right? You know, like people love to travel. They continue to spend on travel. And that continues to happen in the face of some serious challenges. changes. And we talk sometimes about price versus volume. And that's what I put together. We're going to pull up a slide. This is what I put the slide together. But I promise you, if you're a listener, I'll read it aloud. And if you're a visual learner, it's going to be even better if you can see the slide.

4:02Sarah Kopit: And so I looked at in the US, I mean, this is US only, but we looked at airlines, hotels, and overseas travel. And I broke them down into a metric of volume and a metric of price. So if you look at airlines in the United States, we can measure volume through TSA numbers. And if you actually look at TSA passengers screened, it's down negative 0.8 percent. So 1 percent. We can call that flat. Effectively, the same number of people are traveling this year is traveling last year. So air travel volumes are flat. The price for airfares, though, on average in the U.S. are up almost 19 % year on year.

4:41Seth Borko: Yeah. Well, I've been complaining about this.

4:44Sarah Kopit: Yeah. I mean, you're not the only one, right?

4:46Seth Borko: Yeah. Right.

4:48Sarah Kopit: And so I think it's just pretty incredible to see that contrast, flat volume plus 19 % price. Now, on the one hand, and we're going to talk through this when we get to earnings, on the one hand, higher prices is higher revenue. That's incredible. Specifically for the airlines, though, this is a reflection of oil, and so it's passing through the costs. we look at hotels this is through august which is the latest available i had occupancy was up 80 basis points 0.8 percentage points call it one percent increase in occupancy again that's good that's an up but the adrs the average daily rates the actual price of the hotels change has been up about three and a half percent year to date so again this one is much more tied together because hotels don't have to pass along the price of oil but this i kind of kind of thing tells you more the story occupancy up marginally pricing up you know in a much stronger way and then i looked at outbound overseas traffic so americans flying to an overseas destination that's not mexico or canada this is only through the first half of 2016 so only through the summer

5:49Seth Borko: we're overseas we can't we can't go back we can't go back 10 years we can't no this is just 2026

5:57Sarah Kopit: versus 2025. Oh, did I say 2016?

6:00Seth Borko: You did. You said 2016. Yeah, I

6:03Sarah Kopit: misspoke. So, first half of 2026 versus the first half of 2025, number of passengers is up by 1%, which again is good, and it's like 28 million travelers. It's a huge number, but when you actually look, the amount spent per overseas trip per traveler is actually up 5%. So, there's this story happening throughout the travel industry volumes are flat to slightly up price and power much stronger and so i think it speaks to things getting more expensive i think it speaks to people speaking into more stepping up into more premium products taking more international trips spending more on their trips so there's a shift towards premium and there's also a shift of just inflation and costs being passed along through price and power that won't be a surprise to anyone who reads the news or listens to the podcast but i thought that this was a cool slide to put those numbers side by side and make that contrast, you know, really concrete.

6:58Seth Borko: You know what I'd love to see in that chart, Seth, if you could do it in some sort of apples to apples way that wasn't chart crime, as we often say, that doesn't commit chart crime, is if we could get an inflation number on there as well. And I don't know if there is a good number out here, but how much, like if we're talking about Americans, how much Americans have increased their, like, salaries or wages. Like, what that, so those two numbers, too. And so if that's keeping up with inflation, and if inflation is keeping up with all of this, so, like, kind of, like, to get a fuller picture as to, like, what is going on with, like, what is going on with the consumer, too?

7:43Seth Borko: Sarah, are you sure you're not an economist?

7:46Sarah Kopit: Have you taken it? I mean, this is a very good economist question. You've definitely given me plenty of homework. Maybe I'll come back in a couple episodes. But I think that's absolutely right. We could definitely look at that. Look at these things adjusted relative to inflation, adjusted relative to, or I think adjusted relative to earnings growth would actually be a really interesting data set that I haven't seen before.

8:05Seth Borko: Because I have a feeling there's something rotten in Denmark in there. I do. I just, I have this, I have this like gut instinct that is not backed up. buy any data whatsoever that says that people have been spending or just like your average consumer has been spending in this most recent period, maybe since like the Iran war started or at least, I don't know, somewhere, somewhere in early 2026. Like we were in kind of a weird set of economic circumstances that was going to go away. so they've been like well i'm gonna pay for it this time or i'm gonna go on this trip this time or i'm gonna use all of my miles to fly to michigan this time and just like cash them out because like this you know why not do it now but then now when we get into 2027 it's gonna be like well it's like i can't just continue to do this and there's gonna be a pullback that's my like that's my gut that's my instinct don't know if that's right for for the majority of consumers.

9:20Seth Borko: There is that pocket that is just making so much money right now.

9:25Sarah Kopit: Yeah.

9:26Seth Borko: You know, their stock market is on a tear. Their net worth is up. You know, that group. They're, you know, like if it's almost like if you could X, like make them X items. I'm just really curious to see what's going on without them.

9:44Sarah Kopit: Yeah. I mean, I think it's a great question. I think it's a really smart and really sharp observation you're making, Sarah. And I think as much as we love the stock of the consumer, I think it's also important to not paint the consumer with a broad brush because there are some consumers who are absolutely raking it in. The stock market is important. I've talked to some serious investors, and they've told me that they think customers are spending wealth, not spending income, which is the stock market effect you talked about. yeah i do think that to tell you the truth there's a part of me that thinks that we see such a negative sentiment data and there's so many ugly things happen in the world and those things are so expensive and we have we there's a psychology to it but actually the numbers are looking okay is the other piece of it it's like there's some element of it of people's

10:37Seth Borko: like i would know i i would love to be absolutely wrong about this i would love that that'd be

10:43Sarah Kopit: agree um yeah i mean do you want me to let's pull something up here let's just do we're gonna do it live and i actually just gonna be really interested in this will be a good i just seen this and it's a good transition now we're really gonna nerd out and please bear with us if you're if you're a listener but i think you'll actually find that you might have found this i'm gonna share my screen quickly and while we've been talking i swear to god listener this was not planned um um my one of my favorite econ websites it's like an econ hack it's a website called fred like the name like frederick um and it's the uh federal reserve i think it stands for what is it in for federal i think federal reserve economic data something like that i am sharing my screen of fred right now it is a great way to pull up um really fast um economic data from the u.s federal reserve and And this is median usual weekly real earnings for wage and salary workers 16 years and over, which is just a really fancy way of saying this is inflation adjusted real earnings according to this one economic data set.

11:49Sarah Kopit: And I've transformed it to look year on year. So this is growth in real wages year on year by quarter. And what do we see? I'm looking at this live with you right now. I'm reading it live. positive real earnings growth started in q4 of 2022 as we came out of the pandemic continuing pretty strongly i mean it depends your opinion but i'd say pretty strongly one to two percent real earnings growth above inflation up through q3 of 2025 then we have a data gap when the government shut down oops oops oops and then we've got positive earnings growth in q1 positive wage growth in Q2. And actually, and we not scripted, Q3 2026, according to this data, which I'm literally just pulling up, is the first quarter of negative wage, inflation adjusted wage growth, really since 2022, since before the pandemic.

12:48Sarah Kopit: You know, we're not fully trained economists on the show. I just pulled up a single data series. It's not enough to say it, but it speaks to a change and it speaks to a shift that I think we're starting to see in the Q3 company earnings, where in Q2 earnings, the airlines were like, yeah, inflation is high, but we're passed along the prices. We're feeling good. And in Q3 earnings, they're like, well, revenue is still up, but our actual margins are facing some pressure. So I do think the problem with forecasting the future is it's hard, and it's constantly changing. But there does seem like in this current.

13:26Sarah Kopit: Bout of inflation driven by oil prices is. The effects have not been fully felt throughout the economy is my conclusion.

13:38Seth Borko: It's interesting, Seth, because somebody asked me, I can't remember who. Identify yourself if you were the one that asked me this, but they asked me if we had an economist at at Skiff. And I said, well, we have Seth. I said, we have Seth. And so I said, yeah, yeah, we do. We have Seth. So there you go. I called you our time.

14:01Sarah Kopit: So there's your economics corner, your surprise economics corner for this episode. So I think your intuition is right, Sarah, that maybe if you've been feeling this for nine months now, I would say you're wrong. But if it's something you're starting to feel in the past few weeks, I would say that that is your vibes match the Fred economic data.

14:21Seth Borko: It was ever since I tried to buy that ticket to go to Michigan, honestly. It was it was I I tried to buy that plane ticket. That was, I don't know, 5x what it should have been, what I thought it would be. And then I went I went to Dallas like that's where I was when we did this podcast last week. and again it was just like numbers that I just was like this did I put in the wrong city you know we've talked about this on the pod like it's just so and and these these were trips that I took because I had planned to take them I was going to take them but like I'm not going to do that again yeah so I think I so you know I think it's very dangerous to like put your own you know your own feelings and experiences too much into, you know, where you think the rest of the, where the rest of the country at least is, is, is heading.

15:15Seth Borko: But if that's a barometer, that's, that's when I really was like, huh, something is, something is amiss. So we also have had earnings this week. So we have had Hilton, we have had JetBlue, we have had, let's see, who else, what are the biggies that we've had this particular week?

15:34Sarah Kopit: Mainly in, you know, if you're not in the cycle, airlines tend to lead travel company earnings. So we've had most of the U.S. airlines report. We're now early into hotel earnings. Hotels. By Wyndham report as well and Hilton. We're going to get more hotels this week. And then next week, we're going to get some of the online travel agencies and we'll have a fuller picture. So we kind of go. We've also seen cruise companies report. report. So, and cruise companies, they don't get mad at me for saying this. They're kind of just hotels that float. So I would lump them into hotels, to hotels earn-ins.

16:11Seth Borko: I wouldn't even think that they would probably disagree with you there.

16:15Sarah Kopit: Well, I mean, just the economics of how they price, occupancy, average daily rate, yields, upsells for experiences, their dynamics do tend to be, you know, you would consider a week in a hotel or a week in a cruise. They tend to be in competitive comps, even though I understand the operations who actually run in a cruise look significantly different than... Anyways, what did you think of JetBlue earnings? We're New Yorkers. This is our hometown airline. And they've been in the news quite a bit. There's been some doubters. Rumblings. Rumblings. Yeah, tell us about the rumblings first and then tell us what you thought.

16:51Seth Borko: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been a lot of people who have thought their bonds, bond yields me if we want to talk about bonds, have been on a bit of a tear.

17:00Sarah Kopit: This is really an econ episode.

17:01Seth Borko: I was going to say. They've kind of been on a bit of a tear, which is not good for the company. They're heading into clearly distressed territory. There's rumblings about bankruptcy. There's rumblings about an acquisition. Basically, things are going to have to change at JetBlue. But it was interesting. They reported, and their stock took off.

17:27Sarah Kopit: Yeah, I think this was the most interesting earnings report of the airline season because there have been the death of JetBlue has now been foretold so many times. Many times. And there was a news story we reported and others had about the creditors, the bondholders meeting with restructuring firms that have worked with airlines before. where the yields were, you know, there's, and the thing with bankruptcies is, you quoted, I think you had a Hamlet quote earlier, and I'll give you one more literary one, but bankruptcies tend to happen slowly than quickly, or slowly than suddenly, and it's about confidence, and so this was just an absolutely crucial earnings for JetBlue to own up to the doubters, and to put them in their place.

18:18Sarah Kopit: And, you know, if you see a lot, you know, a big move like this, I'm not saying for sure. I know I'm not in the markets closely, but these kind of moves do reflect things like short cover and do reflect things like significant changes in thesis or bet in or option making around these sort of earnings things. They came out, they reported revenue growth of like 20%, I think, but that is mainly them passing along oil prices. I don't know that 20 % revenue growth is great, especially because they actually saw their earnings and their margins declined, their earnings shrank as they saw a huge cut to earnings because of oil.

18:51Sarah Kopit: But I think the most important thing they did was they reaffirmed their long-term profit target and they very aggressively came out and said, you know, kind of very aggressively promised how they would perform profitably wise, profitability wise in 2027. That scared off some of the haters that led to the stock rally and it also sets up a huge amount of pressure to perform on this on this management team so it does seem like jet blue gets to live to fight another day um as i've said on this podcast before it's not a bias they are they're a new york-based airline i've flown a lot i'm continue to root for them um but they continue to have an uphill battle in this in this environment i yeah i i want i want to keep our low-cost carriers around me too me too yeah ironically they're trying to not be a low-cost carrier so if they survive we may still lose the low cost carrier.

19:45Seth Borko: I can't remember if I said, but I flew them to Dublin. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I flew JetBlue long haul, which is the first time that I had. It was great. It was great. And that's a big part of the strategy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yes. I remember. I told you we went to the lounge and I saw the wallpaper. We talked about this. Yes.

20:06Sarah Kopit: What about Hilton? That's one of the early hotel reports what do you think about hilton so well for one thing i thought that um

20:14Seth Borko: our story that we wrote uh luke martin wrote it for for us at skift was i thought you know hilton as a tech company was a was a really interesting take on their earnings and there's been a lot of um i will say ai images of chris masetta in a black turtleneck like float around our internal our internal messaging boards today because, gosh, we are nerds. Like, just so much. Like, and we love it and we just revel in it. But, you know, I thought I wasn't surprised by Hilton's earnings. I, you know, I thought that it was pretty much as I would have expected it to be given the state of the world right now.

20:57Sarah Kopit: Say more about this tech company piece because they made a big shift recently, which has got us kind of glancing askance at the tech company status.

21:07Seth Borko: So for all of you who also look or are into the markets, who kind of fancy themselves market watchers, will know the NASDAQ is the place where all of the tech companies play. And Hilton recently changed to the NASDAQ. And let me pull up the quote here that Chris Nassetta said. He says they are people-led and tech-powered. Which, you know, I mean, I don't think it's terribly controversial to say that the travel industry, the hotel industry, the hospitality industry, it's just it is uncommon. Maybe it will become more common, but it's uncommon to hear leaders talk about themselves as being like adamantly straight out of the gate on the earnings call as a tech powered industry.

21:59Seth Borko: Because, you know, I'm kind of slow to adapt, like as a group. I'm going to talk about Hilton specifically, but as a group, that's kind of, you know, how it is.

22:08Sarah Kopit: The slow to adapt thing, by the way, I think is structural. And it's not any fault of Chris Nassetta or Hilton's. It's the franchise model that makes it hard to adapt because you can't in a centralized or it's very hard in a centralized way to rip out the tech and replace it. So I think as and they've known this, this is not a secret. And so you don't you don't lean into what's not your strengths. So it's interesting to see Hilton. I think the shift to Nasdaq is such a subtle one, but I think it is absolutely trying to signal something to me. It's not like there's any major advantage to being NYSE versus NASDAQ other than the reputation.

22:43Seth Borko: That's the really funny thing, too. I mean, we were talking about this on our edit call this morning, too. Like, it does not matter. Yeah. Like, when you're talking about something like...

22:51Sarah Kopit: The liquidity is the same. The pricing is the same. The investors are the same. It's really... It's really... The only plausible proper explanation I can think of is its signaling. That's it.

23:00Seth Borko: It's optics. That's what it is. It's pure optics. So and it's just it's really interesting when a company like for people like us, when a company does something like that, because you think about it, like for any of you who are, you know, working in business, can you imagine like how much it takes to like switch your where you where you trade? like how much money it cost Hilton to do that for what? Optics. So they really want to send a signal to Wall Street and everybody who's watching the markets. We are a tech company. We are tech forward. Chris is buying the black turtlenecks. Like there's a run.

23:44Sarah Kopit: Yeah, he has to earn his black turtleneck. I think he's making a stab at it. And let's see where he goes. I mean, they hired a new CTO from Uber. They are invested. And he's talking about agents. He's talking about, you know, owner margins, by the way. He's talking about hotel owner margins. And, you know, he's always been a great executor and one of the real, like, forward-thinking CEOs in this space. I'm not just saying that to fluff up Kristen said. I think it's true. And so I think maybe, you know, there's less of a crisis recovery than with JetBlue. But I think similar to JetBlue. All right, game on.

24:16Sarah Kopit: Talk the talk. Time to walk the walk for Hilton. I think she has some interesting shifts there.

24:23Seth Borko: Yeah, and I think, well, and the other thing is, I think we are also at this point where we're at an inflection point with technology right now, especially, like, as we talk about agents and as we talk about, like, as you and I have discussed many a time, it's kind of like now you've just, like, if you're not in, you're out. like you just you've just gotta like you have got to go there um and if you can't bring yourself to to kind of get on board it is at your own peril and we're going to hear even more about this

25:00Sarah Kopit: uh when the online travel agencies report i think uh november 3rd and 4th and 5th are the big reports from like airbnb expedia and booking they will be heavily talking about this they already have been i'm excited to talk about that with you i've got a bet i want to make with you on this topic but we can come back to that at the end of this episode. Let's talk about Airbnb, though, real fast, since I kind of forced a transition to talking about OTAs. Because they were also in the news, and your team has been covering this a lot, they just updated their, speaking of non-tech things that a tech company, it's funny, the non-tech companies are announcing tech stuff.

25:35Sarah Kopit: The tech companies are announcing non-tech stuff. They just announced a shift in their host policies. The number one criticism is the cleaning fees, And they've just totally launched something new. Let's talk about that a little bit.

25:49Seth Borko: So as you all know, I am an Airbnb host. So this one is, this one, I, like, I, it's so interesting to me. And it's interesting to me that they did this. And I actually think it's a good thing for Airbnb. Like, it is a good thing for Airbnb. Me too, by the way, just to say it for the record.

26:11Sarah Kopit: Explain what the change was first.

26:13Seth Borko: Sure. So basically, if you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, depending upon, and this is key, depending upon the individual host, depending upon the person's house that you walked into, you could either be told to like take the trash out, lock the door, which is what I do. Or you could have been given a list of chores, which you are expected to do before you leave the house. and like some of them I rear about I just kind of have to shake my head and chuckle because you know presumably when somebody stays at an Airbnb I'm sure there's some corporate travel but still when you're when you're traveling for work you don't want to do chores either but you're on vacation probably most likely you know you're traveling you're you're you're not in your own house you're not wanting to um you know sweep up and strip the beds and do the laundry

27:05Sarah Kopit: and you know I don't I don't do the laundry in my hotel room let me put it that way right I don't

27:10Seth Borko: change the sheets in a hotel room exactly so that so that was the thing they said that you know there was a lot of people this I think the real host pushback is going to be in this area which probably didn't get as much like kind of like oxygen because it's not the bread and butter I think of the industry but there are some hosts who live either in municipalities or have like high-end, very luxurious properties who have insurance situations, like with pools or whatever, where they have a separate guest contract over and above the Airbnb, you know, click a button and you buy. You have to sign another like rental agreement with the host themselves.

27:55Seth Borko: Well, they banned that. So they banned it all together. They also, and they banned what we call, what we've just in in the media we've been referring to it as chores but you can't take garbage off site for example so you can't make you can you can make people take it out to the like you know to the trash can outside but you can't make them take it you know to the to the local dump you know that type of thing and you can't make people strip the beds anymore either which i thought was interesting um and you can have two rules that's what they said two extra rules for when you're a host so So hosts, of course, are absolutely open arms about this because I think for a lot of people, especially people who are not professional property managers like me, like you don't necessarily like I don't live close to my house.

28:47Seth Borko: After somebody leaves, I don't go up like I don't go up there and I do. I do ask them to take out the trash, but that's it. That's all I do. But it's like, I think for a lot of people, it's like, wait a minute, like, am I going to have pests in my house, like bugs and flies? And are there going to be dirty dishes just laying out everywhere? Most people that we have are very considerate and they leave the house, frankly, cleaner than I do. But, you know, but it's just, but Airbnb really, like, they were like, they're like, no, like, this is not happening anymore. You know, if you're going to charge a cleaning fee.

29:22Sarah Kopit: It's got to pay for the cleaning. I think it's very consumer friendly to be honest with you I know there's a lot of host pushback um and you know I don't want to drag up old dirty laundry but Airbnb did a huge amount of refunds and cancellations during the pandemic and the hosts complained because they lost bookends and it was like that was 100 % the right call and I think this is I think like this is obviously the right call the the the ire and the pushback and the almost memification in the mainstream space about what am i paying a clean and fee for or i get to stay in i get to stay in airbnb and do and do my chores has reached a crescendo this is obviously consumer friendly it's obviously good for the airbnb brand and i think it's interesting that hosts complain i don't want to call the host sour grapes uh in public podcasts like this but um i kind of just did and i think it's it's sort of the right move.

30:17Sarah Kopit: I think it's an ongoing push towards professionalization on Airbnb. Which is what Airbnb

30:24Seth Borko: has said it doesn't want, by the way, too. So these two things are really in conflict.

30:29Sarah Kopit: Actions speak louder than words, Sarah, because they're also doing hotels and they're also doing, I believe this was a scoop that Dennis got. They are now doing an integration with American Express, where with your American Express loyalty platform, you can now book an Airbnb, not like an Airbnb as a generic Kleenex term, but specifically through the airbnb platform so they're now testing b2b distribution with high-end often business travelers they're now putting hotels on a platform they're putting car rentals on a platform they're cleaning up the these cleaning fee i'm gonna call them not that scams but the cleaning fee mess about that yeah that's kind of punny okay and um and um it does seem like they're cleaning house uh again no pun intended and so um uh it will be interesting to see where this evolves but ultimately these feel like the right moves and by the way that american express story was super interesting to me the distribution piece the b airbnb doing b2b distribution is really interesting to me airbnb has always had the strongest brand in the online travel booking space they used i don't know the exact numbers recently but you know, before the pandemic, they would get 90 % direct traffic to Airbnb.com, which Expedia and Booking get like 30 or 40.

31:43Sarah Kopit: Those numbers have shifted a little bit. So it felt like they did not need to lean into B2B in the way that say Expedia has leaned heavily into B2B. And now they're sort of open the door crack to it with the story that Dennis reported with American Express. So it'll be very interesting to see where this plays out.

32:00Seth Borko: And I don't think they'll roll it back. And I don't think hosts will leave. I think people just suck it up and carry on. And I will say it's been a tough one for hosts with Airbnb this year. With the fee increases, with the thing that they did do that kind of annoys me. Although apparently there's a workaround. Like Dennis told me. This is where I'm getting my information. Like I'm running my Airbnb from Dennis, right? they they're not giving hosts phone numbers anymore of the of guests not the real ones they're creating fake phone numbers and it's just if you ever stayed in airbnb most of us will use the last four digits of your phone number as the code for the door because you will not because you will not forget it and believe me getting people just in the door in the house is the hardest part as the host like you want to make like if that doesn't work the whole thing is a catastrophe so that that'll be interesting after october 30th

33:07Sarah Kopit: to see how that plays out i have to say i mean i get why it's annoying for you as the the host i also think that's a good idea uber and doordash do that i don't want a random doordash delivery driver to have my personal phone number uh apple now does a hide my email address thing where i I sign up for the random socks that I buy on the internet or whatever. I don't want them to have my email address for the rest of all time until they get hacked. So I personally, I'm on team Airbnb with this one. I don't want to root for the big corporates against the little guys and girls out there. But I kind of.

33:45Seth Borko: Yeah. And so the answer is what Dennis told me this morning is they are going to give me the last four digits. like as the host me and other hosts they're going to give us the last four digits of the real phone number so we can keep doing this because yeah so we'll see we'll see how we'll see how it works out

34:02Sarah Kopit: let's bring this podcast into its final few segments I have a winner of the week I want to talk to you about I also have a bet I would like to make with you

34:12Seth Borko: well let's do it let's do your winner first and then we'll do the bet alright we already talked about my loser which was going to be Jeff Lube oh no

34:20Sarah Kopit: we're going to bring it back up

34:22Seth Borko: But it's okay. We've already talked about it. So let's hear about the winner.

34:25Sarah Kopit: We've already talked about my winner too, which is the Boston airport, which is Boston Logan Airport auditioning for the voice of the Logan announcements. And you would, you know, if you read the ISO standards, the international standards organizations for what an airport announcement is supposed to sound, it's supposed to be crisp, clean pronunciation, you know, standard English. and they are specifically looking for someone with a strong Boston accent to welcome you to Boston, you know? And I think it's amazing. I love it. And probably 6 ,000 people showed up.

35:02Seth Borko: Yes, 6 ,000 people have applied. I really thought that it should have just been Ben Affleck or Matt Damon, personally. Like, I can't believe it's not them. Like, I cannot. And I think they probably would have done it for free. Like, did they ask? Did Logan ask? I think they should have asked.

35:19Sarah Kopit: This would be the deeply reported feature. Did they ask? Reach out. Can you reach out to Ben Affleck's press people and ask if he was considered for this role?

35:28Seth Borko: Did, maybe they tried out just cold.

35:31Sarah Kopit: Maybe just because they've already got Duncan. Like, can the people of Boston have, like, give him Duncan. They don't need the airport too. The people of Boston can have the airport.

35:41Seth Borko: Yeah, I suppose. It reminds me of when I was, this is a long time ago. this is like ancient history, but when I was in college, we, this was before the internet, when we would do our class selection at the University of Michigan, we had to do it on the phone. And so, you know, you get out the catalog and you type in your number, but on the phone, we always called her the crisp lady. So anyone who went to University of Michigan at a certain time will most certainly remember the crisp lady. It was just a computer automated voice, But there was a petition that went around every year to have James Earl Jones be the crisp lady, to have him have his voice.

36:23Seth Borko: Also, Darth Vader, if any of you don't know who James Earl Jones is, he is also a University of Michigan alum. And and yeah, that would have been just a harrowing success. Unfortunately, that's the end of my story. The crisp lady died when the online situation happened. But alas, it reminded me. That's what I thought of when I heard about Logan.

36:51Sarah Kopit: I like the place they're celebrating their accents. I feel like the internet has homogenized accents. I don't know if that's true or not.

36:59Seth Borko: But the Boston South accent is one of the classics. Yeah. so I concur so what's your bet? what's your bet? what's the bet?

37:09Sarah Kopit: so I would like to make a bet bet the coffee segment with you Sarah I would like for this bet to pay out live when we do a live podcast at the commerce yes

37:21Seth Borko: yes we are I think we're closing the day

37:23Sarah Kopit: on November 11th on November 11th be there or be square or listen to us but and I've got a fun bet I had my AI

37:33Seth Borko: I have no idea what this bet is, by the way. I'm a little nervous. Go ahead. No, no, no. This is a simple bet. This is a simple one.

37:41Sarah Kopit: I am my AI. I clawed go through the earnings transcripts of Expedia, Bookin, Holdens, and Airbnb, which are all due to report next week. And count up last quarter how many times Glenn Fogel, Brian Chesky, and Ariane Gorin said the words AI. And I would like to, I'll tell you the total. Do you want to guess what the total is?

38:02Seth Borko: No. because like no because i could yes okay tell me all right uh arian mentioned ai eight times

38:11Sarah Kopit: okay brian chesky mentioned ai 18 times and glenn fogel mentioned it a whopping 27 times okay 53

38:21Seth Borko: ai mentions i would have thought it was higher i was gonna say so for q3 this is the bet over under

38:27Sarah Kopit: The Vets, a simple over-under. Are you taking the, for Q3 2026, which we'll know the answer to by the time we're on stage live, we'll have a tally. Are you going to take the over or the under on 53 combined mentions for AI?

38:42Seth Borko: I'm taking the over, and I'm dreaming about what my coffee is going to be like right now, because like, there's no way you're winning this Vetseth.

38:52Sarah Kopit: We'll see.

38:53Seth Borko: We'll see, yeah. I mean, I got a latte last time. I'm going to have to think of something.

38:59Sarah Kopit: It is pumpkin spice season, so start to start.

39:03Seth Borko: By the time we get into it, it's going to be like peppermint season. I enjoy the peppermint coffee a lot more than the pumpkin spice, so maybe that will be the order.

39:13Sarah Kopit: Is it the last session of the day?

39:14Seth Borko: Yeah, I think it is. I love to talk to the glorious Brian Quinn, who is programming this event.

39:22Sarah Kopit: If it's the last session of the day, I wonder if we can get away with an Irish coffee in honor of your Dublin trip. Oh, yes.

39:29Seth Borko: Yes, we can. We absolutely can do that, Seth. Nobody's going to stop us. You know, we're going to roll right into the reception.

39:38Sarah Kopit: If you are on the management team of Skift and you would like to stop us, listen to this podcast and email us. Prove that you listen to the podcast and email us and tell us that that's against company policy. And if no one tells us, we're going to assume it's OK. We're going to default to yes.

39:51Seth Borko: Cheers. There you go. All right. So I think that also is just a, you know, if there's ever any more of a reason for you to just come to the Commerce Summit and you could like heckle us from the state or from the audience or whatever. Maybe we'll share some of our Irish coffee with you.

40:10Sarah Kopit: Perfect. All right. I am very much looking forward to it. I think that's a wrap on today's episode. Thank you everyone for listening and we will see you next week.

40:20Seth Borko: See you next week, everybody.

40:26you