Travel's $100 Billion Opportunity Is Being Overlooked

0:23Seth Borko: The number of the week is 100 billion. Actually,$99.7 billion. But, you know, we're going to round up here on the Skiff Travel Podcast to$100 billion. That is the annual U.S. retiree spending in 2026, according to Skiff Research. That is one-fifth of the U.S. population holding half of all of the household wealth. That is a lot of money that mom and dad and grandma and grandpa are sitting on. And you know what they're doing with it? What are they doing with it, Seth?

0:56Sarah Kopit: they're traveling they're spending they're seeing the world they've got their bucket lists uh i we've been calling it i've been calling it a travel inheritance uh which is that um it is your it's your inheritance well it's their money actually but yeah it is a travel inheritance of this older generation of boomers increasingly gen x by the way are of retirement age and as

1:18Seth Borko: people retire they've got these wonderful did you see my face sorry sorry sarah i don't know

1:25Sarah Kopit: I just no no you've got well I mean retirement seems wonderful to me are you the kind of person

1:31Seth Borko: who's I yeah I don't know it's like catch me on my day it's like it depends upon when you catch me every once in a while every once in a while it sneaks in retirement well I feel like yeah you

1:45Sarah Kopit: know yeah I mean we don't want to retire just yet and I'm you know you we're both pretty far away from it but I could see yeah a wonderful retirement Sarah I think you've got at least one maybe two books in you i could see you write in i could see you publishing travel in the world i think it would be i think it'd be fun i think it'd be fun i was gonna say i think i could find

2:03Seth Borko: things to do that's i guess i guess that's all i have to say i think i could find some things to do if not having to you know rely on a on a steady paycheck but i digress how have you been doing i

2:15Sarah Kopit: feel like we have been a bit ships in the night i haven't seen you or chatted a ton with you in Carson. You were just in Ireland. Is that correct?

2:23Seth Borko: I was in Ireland and right now I'm sitting in Dallas. I'm not in, I'm not at home right now either. So I came home for like a quick weekend and now I'm in Dallas. But yes, I was in Ireland for the Skift Transatlantic Summit. It was the second one that we've done of these. The first one was in New York last year. This year we crossed the pond and did it in Dublin, Ireland at a beautiful place on the, I was going to say the ocean, but it's not on the sea. Or it's not on the ocean, it's on the sea. And it was a quick trip, but it was great. We went to a castle and I met Irish wolfhounds, which are enormous.

3:03Seth Borko: I mean, like, so we did all the things. We talked about travel, we talked about money, we talked about regulation and government and castles and ghosts and wolfhounds as well. And I met some fans of the podcast. Like it was fantastic.

3:17Sarah Kopit: That sounds wonderful. It sounds like all the things I'm interested in. I've been watching this TV show called Ghosts. Sorry, this is a this is a tangent. We'll come back to it later. No, no, no.

3:26Seth Borko: I want to hear about this. It's October. It's spooky season. It's allowed.

3:30Sarah Kopit: It's a CBS sitcom. It's just like a classic sitcom. It's called Ghosts. And I will say it does sort of make me think of you a little bit, Sarah, whenever I watch it. The main character is a former New York City journalist who buys an upstate house upstate to turn into a hotel slash B &B. Yeah. And it turns out to be haunted with friendly ghosts. So I think it mostly fits you except for presumably the haunted bits. But well, who knows?

4:05Seth Borko: There's this really funny meme that you always see online that, well, at least you always see people who like buy old houses upstate always see online. And it's something like, you know, it's like a person and then there's a ghost in the cartoon. And it's something like, you know, the relief you feel when you realize, you know, those bumps in the night are just the ghosts and not shit you have to fix. And that's exactly how I feel. Yeah, ghosts is much preferable to a bill, to an upkeeper.

4:39Sarah Kopit: Any time.

4:40Seth Borko: Yeah, exactly.

4:43Sarah Kopit: I digress. I digress. You were in Ireland. You were doing the second and transatlantic. I didn't get a chance to come. I was in London and then D.C.

4:49Seth Borko: I was going to say.

4:51Sarah Kopit: Yeah, I was at a startup pitch, travel tech startup pitch competition in D.C. Very interesting. Were you a judge? I was not a judge. I was just given some venture capital data. but it was so I bumped into some some fans of the podcast I think did you you did as well right and in Ireland absolutely I did yeah love all of you yeah thank you for listening yeah I'm I'm increasingly getting stage fright when we start these shows because I used to think it was just us two talking and now I'm realizing there might be other people listening as well there

5:25Seth Borko: are other people listening I can I can now I'm now kind of getting that in my you know it's kind

5:31Sarah Kopit: As I start to internalize it, I might have to speak differently.

5:36Seth Borko: Well, oh, but the, you know, the fan who shall remain nameless, he was telling me, he's like, I said something about, well, I don't know if you saw, like, X, Y, and Z thing. He's like, what do you mean saw it? I said, oh. I'm like, well, we're on YouTube. We record the podcast. He's like, really? And he's like, I only listen to it on, like, Spotify or Apple or whatever. I'm like, no, man, you can watch us do this. I don't know why you would watch us. Don't tell too many people they can watch us.

6:07Sarah Kopit: I'm wearing like a band t-shirt from Mumford & Sons. I'm a fan. And you're wearing like a very nice, you're always wearing something very nice, Sarah. And I always feel inadequate. So for our listeners, don't know there's a disparity between us. But our viewers obviously have realized that there is a disparity.

6:23Seth Borko: So yeah, so I was in Ireland at the Transatlantic Summit. You were in London at the Data and AI Summit. How was that?

6:31Sarah Kopit: It was great. It was just so much fun. Really good energy. And also this travel tech thing. I mean, it is just the conversation around agents and around AI has just moved in leaps and bounds. People are really... It's so interesting. I feel like a while ago, there was maybe some debate about whether this was the future. Everyone is on board that it's the future. Now the debate is just like, who's going to capture the value of it? Really, really interesting conversations. How was Transatlantic? I want you to tell me about it. I want to say this is one of my favorite events. We did it last year in partnership with the ETC, the European Travel Commission.

7:09Sarah Kopit: And I think it was just such a great idea because it was about, you know, Rafat, our CEO and founder, Rafat Ali, is really into this idea of travel corridors. I was thinking about these like huge corridors, flows of people, money, time, energy, businesses. and the transatlantic is like i did the presentation last year and i had steamships and i had a concord and it's it's the most storied arguably the most important quarter in the world i think it's so cool that we have put a whole event behind it um and so how was it i missed it this year so i regret that how was it how was it this year it was fantastic i mean i

7:47Seth Borko: think that the one of the biggest things that i took i took away from just the content from what everybody was talking about on stage, and this is as somebody on, you know, the more westerly side of the pond, is that increasingly it used to be, and you can understand why, that when people thought about like, you know, it's like North America and Europe, like North America, especially the United States and Canada, were kind of like lumped together. Like they were like this, this, this is the group that is, that is traveling that people would think about. But they're starting to, but the Europeans are starting to think about us very differently.

8:26Seth Borko: The Canadian traveler and the U S traveler are splitting apart. And you, I mean, that seems like when you say it out loud, it seems quite obvious that that is happening now. So I thought that was really fascinating. I mean, we don't necessarily, it doesn't sound,

8:45Sarah Kopit: I mean, I guess, right. When we start to think about it, it does seem a little more obvious, but I would not, it makes sense because I, I mean, And I also just know from our skipped advisory, you know, tourism consultant practice and others. I'm just speaking to destinations. And there's been a huge segmentation push to say, like, because so many Canadians have, for instance, you know, Canada is the largest group of tourists to Florida. Yeah. By far. And many of them actually own. And they stopped going. And so there's I know that there's been a lot of conversations about for destinations about like replacement, about like.

9:18Sarah Kopit: Yeah. If you're Mexico, if you're Cancun, if you're actually I met one of the tourism folks from Quintana Roo, which is the Mexican state that is home to Cancun. If you're Cancun, there are a lot of Canadians who want a sun and sand vacation who probably are not going to Florida, you know, this year or last year or next year or any, you know, in general. And so I think, you know, it's a lot of contributed. It's easy to attribute it to politics like, oh, well, now the US and Canada are so different politically. And I guess it's it's a it's a second order effect of that. But I think it's also just good business that there is an opportunity to win Canadian business that is now looking for that would have gone domestic and is now going international.

10:03Seth Borko: So it's so we found that twenty three point five percent fewer Canadians visit the United States. So like the Canadians are still very angry at the United States, at Donald Trump, at all of the jabs that our leadership has taken at them. And so in that same time, you know, 13.6 % more Canadian visitors went to Europe. So that replacement is completely happening. Like that is going on. And so the Europeans are courting the Canadians who are not, you know, coming to the U.S. anymore.

10:45Sarah Kopit: That makes perfect sense. I mean, we we do continue to see some European visitation to the U.S., although that number, the overall inbound visitation, the U.S. is still down as well. we had an interesting conversation debate Sarah I don't know if we're allowed to share too much of the inner workings about what's going on with U.S. travel to Europe was did that conversation come up I mean obviously the Canadians are up 13 percent I think U.S. is only up like one or two percent I guess depends on the market right yeah yeah it depends upon how on how you

11:14Seth Borko: slice the data but yeah it was up Americans are going to Europe still but it's kind of been softening just a little bit and like just how how you splice that data um you know you can get a few

11:31Sarah Kopit: different results because we were having a debate internally whether it was good or bad and i definitely feel like two different people could look at the same data and be like yes oh it's a good year but it's a bad summer and what is what does a bad summer mean in the context of a good year and how do you and what does bad even mean you know like if you're down one or two percent and you're still getting millions of visitors. It's still your largest amount market. Is that good? Is that bad? It's an interesting... It's interesting how data... Everyone thinks data is the end-all be-all and it's just the start actually of how you interpret it.

12:06Seth Borko: And it's why people like you, Seth, are just so valuable to all of us because many of us just... You look at all these numbers, you're like, can somebody just tell me what that means, please? and whenever I think that, whenever those overwhelming feelings of desperation at the numbers, I just pick Seth and he makes it all okay. The other thing that I heard, the other thing that I heard a lot about, which is like what we were saying, Europe generally, like just this is a broad sweeping statement, but Europe has enough tourists. They just do. A lot of places don't want more tourists, period. But that's just some places.

12:47Seth Borko: The thing that Europe is trying to do so, so, so, so, so very hard is to get people to stop all going to the same places. And this was a big thing we talked about is getting people to spread out. And there's there are challenges to that. I mean, over and above just like everybody wants to see the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum or go to Santorini, you know. But just kind of above that, you know, multimodal transportation, like how are you going to get there, the infrastructure that is required to support such things, red tape, bureaucracy, legislation, getting through borders, visas, like all of that kind of stuff is really very high on the agenda of the Europeans to make it so, you know, they can accommodate more people.

13:38Seth Borko: without just completely destroying Barcelona.

13:42Sarah Kopit: Well, I was actually going to give the example of Spain, which is, I think, even more so than France, such a good example of this. But it also shows, I mean, we can talk about this, but Barcelona continues to be destroyed. They have launched so many flights to so many secondary cities. There's now, I think, San Sebastian. There's Malaga. There's all these like, you know, the the all the the Mallorca, Menorca, all these islands that canary like there's so many Spanish destinations of secondary service. And I give credit to the Spanish tourism boards and to the airlines and also obviously to the customers themselves.

14:20Sarah Kopit: They're launching these routes and they're finding them clearly performing. And, you know, Spain has so densified its direct route network into what would have been considered secondary cities all over the country.

14:34Seth Borko: And yet it's like, yes, and and yet Barcelona continues to just be huge.

14:40Sarah Kopit: No one no one can stop. So it's this like interesting problem where you're like, oh, we're going to take these Barcelona tourists and put them to San Sebastian. And then it's like, no, no, no. You're going to get San Sebastian tourists. And by the way, people still want to go to Barcelona. Yeah.

14:55Seth Borko: Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was that was another biggie that just kept on. You know, we kept on hearing about it like over and over and over and over again. You know, it's not only we were we were in Ireland. So, you know, we were talking about how the actually said that U.S. tourists. And I actually think I know why this is. They this is coming just from my own personal history. is that U.S. tourists, when they come to Ireland, are actually pretty good about fanning out and going all over the island. I think a lot of that is heritage and ancestral tourism. Because people like me, one side of my family, they're all Irish.

15:37Seth Borko: You go and you see the family crest and the old castle and you try to go to all that stuff. So Americans in Ireland, at least, are pretty good about and they're really valuable tourists to the destination who will go out and drive around

15:52Sarah Kopit: i think it's something similar and i mean you know there's a different reason for i think something similar with southern italy and sicily where it's like northern italy was has is rich and has always been rich and therefore they did not immigrate to the u.s and same thing with like ireland like dub i mean dublin has its ups and downs but like generally the cities and the capital cities are always rich it's the it's the the hinterlands where they like were really struggling and so and then you know and now there's so much italian heritage tourism to like sicily even calabria and i'm sure it's the same deal in ireland i mean i know uh i know like my my family is like central and eastern european and so like there's a lot of interest in like i actually was just i actually was just in hungary which is where my great-grandfather came from

16:38Seth Borko: so like yeah oh god i was i was gonna say may i indulge with a story please i love a story always you don't have to ask so i don't even know if this story is true but like this is like the fun thing about like heritage tourism and like going to find like where the family is from you know they're like big fish stories like the family story as it gets passed on through generation after generation i mean just gets better right yeah i would love i would love to know so i have um not on the iris side and the other side on my dad's side of the family we are of a line called the stalkers and there is a castle in scotland so these are the scott there's a castle in scotland called stalker castle it is on an island as the story goes there were five brothers who lived in this castle and like i don't know 1700s 1800s probably 1800s i would guess because the u.s was around and they i don't know these these brothers they were up to some hijinks, the Stalker brothers.

17:47Seth Borko: And the tax collector and the police were after them. And they apparently, as legend has it, sold the castle for a boat. And they used the boat to get to the United States. I don't know what kind of boat you're crossing the Atlantic in, but in the story, this is indeed what happened. And that is how that branch of my family got to the United States of America. I have pictures of myself standing in front of the Stalker castle when I I was a little kid. My parents took us there.

18:13Sarah Kopit: Incredible.

18:14Seth Borko: I would love to go back and see it again.

18:17Sarah Kopit: I would love to. I mean, I don't want to veer too much from Ireland, but I love Scotland. I think it's like the most beautiful country in the world. And I just Googled it as we're talking. And it does appear to be in the highlands of Scotland, if I'm not mistaken, which I think.

18:33Seth Borko: Don't remember. I was very little.

18:35Sarah Kopit: I think it is in the highlands. And it would be the same sort of thing because the highlands in Scotland were the most, you know, there's a lot of most impoverished um we if we if we really want to talk about heritage tourism to ireland we have to get uh hotel intrepid hotel reporter sean o 'neill on the pod oh yeah absolutely yeah um but i think it's it's interesting so yeah i think you're right i mean the secondary city but i think you know back to back to business back to transatlantic yeah i think the american traveler is primed for these sort of trips in a way that they were not in the past i've cited numbers like this before uh i'm trying not to give out too much personal information on the internet so i won't i won't tell you exactly when i was born but in 1990 give or take only about

19:23Seth Borko: four percent of you're such a you're such a you're such a bad never mind go on carry on it's okay don't tell me one don't tell anyone i would tell them um um but in the turn of the of the turn of

19:40Sarah Kopit: the the 90s in the early 90s yeah um less the late 80s early 90s basically less than give about four or five percent of the u.s population had a passport that includes babies and includes you know elderly which we'll talk about later today that number is closer to 50 percent and again i I think 50 % including infants and including people in their 90s who are not traveling. So when you actually think like what percentage are like the actual able-bodied U.S. population passport, it's a dramatic amount. I think I've cited these stats before, but like something like 90 % of Americans who visit or let me flip it around.

20:22Sarah Kopit: Of Americans who visit Europe, just 10 % of them, this is their first international trip. 90 % of them have taken an international trip abroad outside the United States before they come to Europe on their on their most recent European trip. Now, crossing the border to Canada is an international trip. How many of these people are driving our day trippers to Canada versus how many of them have done a rugged expedition to Africa? I don't know. But the point is that Americans are so much more experienced tourists these days. I think this is a market that is primed for these secondary cities, for these non I won't call non traditional before going to different destinations for going to central europe going to hungary where i just was going for going to slovenia which i talked on the last podcast and i was scolded by um you know who you are by by the pr rep for slovenia who told me i was pronouncing the capital city incorrectly you'll notice i haven't said the name of the capital city because i don't want to mispronounce it intimidated yeah and uh but like going to i mean our ceo and founder raf just wrote an article about poland which is just this incredible economic growth story spot on you know the gdp per capita of poland is on pace to be as high if not higher than the uk's within less than a decade like there are major economies major doris attractions so there is plenty to go around in my opinion plenty to see in europe that is not paris and by the way i don't know if we're allowed to joke about this or talk about this but by the way if you wanted to keep tourists out of paris they're doing a pretty good job right now as we speak they're doing a pretty good job

21:59Seth Borko: right now and so so did you see the video online of the parisians drinking wine at the cafe while

22:06Sarah Kopit: harris burned in the background i saw a version i saw yeah i saw a version i saw tourists with their suitcases just going through the crowds i saw people drinking wine yeah yeah these weren't

22:17Seth Borko: These weren't tourists. These were Parisians. Yeah, these were locals. And it's like I've never seen a more. I mean, it's a lot like a New Yorker, really. It's like, you know, whenever people talk about what New Yorkers are scared of, it's never like fire and bedlam. It's like seamless outage.

22:41Sarah Kopit: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

22:42Seth Borko: Like that's it. That's it. But I digress. So a lot of these people, though, who are traveling and traveling to Europe, who are they? They're boomers. They're boomers. They're retired and they're spending money. And you know what I hope they're doing? You were saying that you call it inheritance travel, but at least this is what I tell my own parents because they were public school teachers in Michigan and I know for a fact have never flown business class. they travel and they go to europe i keep on telling them fly business class to europe oh my god do it but it costs like six thousand dollars i'm like yes it does you can't take it with you do it yes can't take it with you you don't fly business class with that money i'm going to like that money is going towards a business class ticket one way or another and it can either

23:34Sarah Kopit: you can either pay tax anything part of it go uncle sam and part of it go to my business class

23:40Seth Borko: So I highly recommend it go to yours. So, but however they get there, they go, they enjoy themselves. They love it there. They've been all over the place. Props mom and dad for that. But I mean, they are just indicative of what boomers with, you know, some savings of a whole hard, you know, of a life well-lived and earned. That's what they're doing right now.

24:03Sarah Kopit: So we just published some new research on the baby boomers. We've got on Gen X coming out as well. I really encourage you all to look at it I was looking at the metrics it was a little disappointing our Gen Z research just did gangbusters our boomer research

24:17Seth Borko: was not as well loved and I

24:19Sarah Kopit: think it reflects an unfair bias for the industry we're always saying what's next I've already had people reach out to me about doing Gen Alpha research and Gen Alpha are like teenagers yeah they're my kids yeah and it's like guys there is as you said on the lead there is a hundred billion dollars that has to spend this money in the next five years or lose it and you're asking me about 16 year olds like yeah i think that there is some i don't want to accuse the industry of ageism but i think there is some some you know people want what's hip what's cool what's next they don't want to relate to the the older folks but they have so much money to spend

24:57Seth Borko: our research shows well and especially this particular generation this particular generation yeah they're the biggest ever yeah they're the biggest healthiest live in the longest all of it

25:07Sarah Kopit: yes that's right and we think we think the boomer wave is going to crest in 2035 so you've got a decade like that's that's a decade we think it's going to crest at 149 we're rounding up as you said in the beginning 149 called 150 billion so that's 100 billion annual spend we estimate today between gen x and boomers so these older two generations we think 100 billion today annually we think it's going to go to 150 billion annually in 2035 there is a we call it the silver tsunami we think that there is a a decade of gains and revenue being made in these older generations um that is is not being overlooked by the travel industry but that is being cast as uncool they are and yes they are cruising but by the way they're not taking like i mean some of them are taking you know the classic boomer cruise some of them are taking we've had explorer on this podcast before.

26:03Sarah Kopit: Some of them are taking some very high-end cruises. I know my parents have converted to cruisers and they've converted to some very fancy cruises that I am very jealous of. And I'm like, this is not what I thought a cruise was. We also know, you know, they are willing to pay premiums for flexibility, right? They are a little older. They're looking for comfort, for creature comforts. There is upselling opportunities for the business class tickets, for the early and late checkouts, for the flexible airfares, for those sort of things that I think do matter to this customer base that is there. And, you know, there's a bit of a contradiction where we know they've got a ton of money.

26:44Sarah Kopit: We know travel is their priority. They tell us that in their surveys. Let me give you a quick stat. So many of you have told us that you listen. I'm not pulling up charts. I'm just reading them out loud now. but they've told us that 34 % of boomers strongly agree that they would rather spend their savings on travel experiences now rather than preserve them as inheritance. 38 % somewhat agree. I'm doing some quick maths on the pod, but I think that's 72 % in total, the vast majority who want to spend it. And then we have in terms of I have given or plan to give money specifically earmarked for travel to my children or grandchildren.

27:23Sarah Kopit: Less so with the boomers, although still close to 40%. With the Gen Xers, it is 27 % strongly agree, 39 % somewhat agree. So, I mean, that's, again, a 70 plus share. So there's money out there being earmarked towards multi-generational trips, towards skipped travel trips, towards upgrades, towards indulgences, towards exploration that is out there that I think is frankly being a little bit overlooked when we do talk to traveler boomers they they self-identify as very cost-conscious and um in a very critical of boomers ways they they they claim to be cost conscious and then immediately contradict themselves in every other data point we have and as although they have an identity of cost-conscious they actually when they vote with their feet they put some of the strongest priorities on travel on comfort on experience out of any generation and so i think as they should as they should so i think you have to like look past and in some ways sell past the cost consciousness thing like you can't they can't feel ripped off or you have to kind of boil the frog a little bit in terms of walk them into spend just like you do sarah you have to talk them into spending on themselves just a little bit they've internalized they have such a generational internalization of being cost conscious but they've got the time they've got the money they've got the need and so if you have a great daughter like sarah to talk them into it they they kind of want it what our data sort of shows is they want to be

28:53Seth Borko: talked into splurgeon if that makes any sense you know i gotta just to do a little bit of armchair you know psychoanalyzing of like historical generations i wonder if the boomers identify as being so cost conscious because they were raised by parents who lived through you know depression yeah absolutely i wonder i wonder what that means for like your gen x reports that like because i i would say that gen x is probably not going to come up and self-identify as i don't think they will cost conscious at all i don't think they will oh yeah so and by the way like

29:31Sarah Kopit: when i say that there's going to be that silver tsunami over the next decade that is fueled by boomers living longer than ever but as the boomers live longer the gen xers are going to hit prime retirement, you know, or early retirement over the next decade. And so you're going to have these kind of cost conscious boomers, but who want to travel, who have the time to travel, and are going to increasingly spend their time across grandkids and multiple generations doing that travel, but sort of reticent to get over that cost consciousness. And then all of a sudden, you're going to hit these Gen Xers that are going to retire.

30:02Sarah Kopit: And I agree with you, Sarah, I think they're going to have a very different generational mindset, and they will not need as much convincing from their daughters to buy the business class ticket and and that's going to be big and then um and then by the time the millennials are there you know social security

30:16Seth Borko: will be bankrupt so we'll you know we'll have our our robot overlords will be here it's all going to be different or we're all bets are off we can we can continue the skip travel podcast at that time and take a look back at this very funny segment um but that that's that's our that's some

30:34Sarah Kopit: of our latest research and again i encourage you to check it out i'm scolding you a little bit for our statistics that show that you only care about younger generations i know that there's that people care about the older generations too and i and i know there's money there so uh i was gonna say

30:48Seth Borko: you don't need to care about them all you're right you is like be incentivized by capitalism so there you go um did you see the article in the wall street journal about the end of the barf

30:58Sarah Kopit: bag i not only did i see it but i it's been on my mind because my last few flights it there's been none and i and i've yeah yeah i have been robbed of the barf bag and i think to myself what what what if because i i also i think we have talked about this in the past i love a window seat yeah i love a window seat same yeah me too so i'm stuck between i i got i i got a long way to go I think I'm a pretty good traveler, but I'm sure there's people with queasier stomachs who also love the window seat. And what do you do without a barf bag?

31:35Seth Borko: Yeah, I'm a queasy traveler. And so when I saw that on my way here to Dallas, I actually checked on my frontier flight. There was a barf bag. I took a picture. It looks like me holding a barf bag.

31:50Sarah Kopit: Well, are you speaking of the little travel hacks that, by the way, I read that apparently, I didn't actually understand what the travel hack was, but people were using a barf bag and some sort of viral travel hack. And that's one of the reasons that the Wall Street Journal put forward that airplanes have started to remove them.

32:08Seth Borko: I don't know. I was a little frustrated.

32:10Sarah Kopit: You know, I got. Yeah. I don't know what you're going to say.

32:11Seth Borko: Oh, I was just going to say because my frontier flight didn't have Wi-Fi. You know, I started writing the great American novel on the back of the barf bag. So I don't know what else to do.

32:21Sarah Kopit: No Wi-Fi on a flight in the year of our Lord, 2026. How is that possible?

32:26Seth Borko: I didn't know, Seth. I went on that flight thinking I would at least be able to part with$25 to get Wi-Fi. Frontier, you're killing me. My sister, who lives in Denver, who's an avid Frontier flyer, I text her from the plane as I'm trying to connect to the Wi-Fi. I'm like, does Frontier not have Wi-Fi? And she says, ha, ha, ha, ha. knowing like she knows me well enough to know like the panic and uh you know that was that was ensuing and she's like no they don't so anyway i think it's coming i look i am there are many

33:03Sarah Kopit: there are many quaint things about the world before uh omnipresent wi-fi there are many quaint things about the world travel that i appreciate i've appreciated working with travel agents before i've appreciated we've talked about old hotels did i tell you by the way that we stopped by the when I was in London with my I was with my sister and brother-in-law and we stopped by the Raffles Old War office just to poke around

33:26Seth Borko: no you didn't tell me that inspired by your love

33:30Sarah Kopit: it's incredible it's incredible right

33:33Seth Borko: did you see the lion that was worn down on the staircase

33:36Sarah Kopit: oh I did I did I did see it

33:38Seth Borko: yeah because Winston Churchill used to do it every day and so everybody else did it too and so when they remodeled So when they remodeled, they left that staircase with the worn down lion.

33:52Sarah Kopit: But what I'm saying is I think you and I both have a love for quaint, for tradition, for ghosts instead of bills. But the one thing that I will never have nostalgia for or mourn is lack of Wi-Fi on an airplane. That is one area where I want to be ripped into the future and stay there permanently. I love in-flight Wi-Fi.

34:12Seth Borko: Wi-Fi is a human right, man. i mean it just should be every it should just be like piped all over the world i we could do it we could do it we got starlink does it's yeah that's literally what starlink has done yeah it's darling it's just yeah i think it would be i i think we all would be better list of list

34:31Sarah Kopit: of skiff travel podcast uh travel peculiarities and preferences we love wi-fi and planes we love iron boards in hotel rooms yes uh we hate um slide barn door bathroom doors and glass bathroom doors and hotels yes uh i think we could go on what else is in the list but i i'm sure we know we could we could we could start a merch store seth yeah oh we love black black toilet seats will our producer has said black toilet seats increased property value um we'll keep going we'll keep it up oh hate hate um i think you're on board with man this but um this is a new one i'm throwing out there but we we're we're into the just want the lay flat seat just the seat please i don't need any other i don't need any of the other i don't need any of the food any of the meals we did an article about airlines competing on on quality of food i'm like don't

35:26Seth Borko: bother i just want the seat please just the seat please absolutely i i thousand percent on that one um yeah do you do we have some winners and losers list i i have some i have some yeah i've got a winner i've got a winner all right do you have a loser i do i have a loser i unfortunately here i am in in in dallas land of land of the airlines but the airlines are having a tough one they just did earnings um american hasn't reported yet as of this uh as of this the recording of this podcast but United and Delta have, and they cut their forecasts, and they cut their forecasts for reasons completely known to all of us, the price of oil.

36:09So that's rough.

36:10Seth Borko: Sucks. That's rough.

36:12Sarah Kopit: Remember they were saying in Q2, like, we're not ready to cut our forecast just yet. Like, we think we can still do it, and it was like.

36:19Seth Borko: That's why I flew Frontier down here. No, I'm going to get hate mail from Frontier. But I flew Frontier from New York City to Dallas because that was only like$450 for the ticket instead of like I would have typically flown American, which was like$900 or$850 for a flight. Like New York City to like all these major cities, it's usually a pretty cheap flight anywhere just because there's always so many of them. And, you know, they're just like, they're just like the, they fly every hour. It's like, I don't know. So now it's just, it's so different than it once was. All of six months ago. I mean, like, we're not talking about the good old days here.

37:03Sarah Kopit: Well, if we are, since I'll take some heat off of you from Frontier by diffusing it. Since we are apparently calling out airlines by name. But I am looking to fly back for my parents who live in Palm Beach. Yeah. flying out of uh oh a fun one uh palm beach international airport now renamed donald trump international airport dj actually do it fully renamed and the okay oh no no it's it's it's this is not the kennedy this is not the kennedy center there isn't this is florida there's no fight over it this is palm beach it is fully renamed it is donald trump international airport and the the airport code which sometimes doesn't change when they change the name the airport code is no longer pbi it is now djt airport code when you get a baggage tag it says djt on it

37:50Seth Borko: all right so i have to write i have to write my newsletter soon that will go out this weekend we're gonna have a little chat about yeah about about the lead of the newsletter this week to get a twofer on this one podcast and a newsletter i was looking for my return flight

38:06Sarah Kopit: Yeah. United Airlines is charging$1 ,000 one way from DJT to EWR. I'm a loyal United Flyer. I'm generally a fan of theirs. I'm on your side, United. But what are you thinking? $1 ,000 one way?

38:25Seth Borko: No, that was like the flight to Michigan. Same thing where I burned all. And now I've burned all my points. So what are we all to do when all of our points are gone? I don't know. I'm very concerned, Seth.

38:37Sarah Kopit: Well, I was actually going to give my winner of the week to Hilton and actually to Wyndham, hotel companies who have both reported earnings. And I believe some of this is happening as we speak, as we record, but they've mostly beat earnings. And some of them have actually improved, have shown growth. I know US Revcar has actually trended pretty good. Again, it goes back to our European conversation about what is good is, you know, plus two, plus three, plus four, plus five percent REFCAR good. I would argue, yes. I mean, when inflation is two or three percent, it's flat. But you go, I'm not going to quibble with growth.

39:20Sarah Kopit: That's sort of my perspective. So I would call the early – so far, these early hotel earnings reports have been positive with earnings mostly at or above consensus and fairly optimistic outlooks. Or let's not call it optimistic, but call it cautiously optimistic outlooks, which I think is quite interesting to note that discrepancy between your losers. And I think you rightly put your finger on why they would diverge if they both are exposed to the same underlying travel demand. Why would one be strong and the other be weak? And the difference is oil, jet fuel, jet fuel. Yeah. I am.

40:10Seth Borko: I mean, everything, all of the CEOs and executives that I have read, at least through Meghna's reporting, our airline reporter, has said that these prices are going to stay around. I am curious if all of the masses, all the flyers will revolt if the price of oil goes back down and your$1 ,000 flight from Palm Beach to Newark stays at$1 ,000. bucks well there's the thing is there's yeah you would hope that competition can work

40:44Sarah Kopit: i mean capitalism there you go jet blue is flying out of the same airport for quite literally literally 20 percent yeah like two or three hundred dollars there are and you know fort lauderdale airport sorry we don't need to talk about the microstructure of these markets but like like fort lauderdale it's 300 bucks and it's only an hour it's like a 45 minute drive away so these are these are markets that compete that are theoretically interchangeable so there should be some competitive pressure uh to help fares converge towards a point so i don't know what they're seeing i don't know what they're expecting i don't know what maybe maybe the president maybe for all i know someone in donald trump's staff has unlimited budget and flies this one route and they book it for a thousand bucks every every christmas i don't know maybe he's having a christmas party at mar-a-lago and they're all flying back i don't know what they're seeing but it will be interesting to see how responsive i think the one the people everyone is skeptical that fares will not come back down and i think it's true that companies will try to hold on to pricing power as long as they can but the wonderful the wonderful thing and the frustrating about airlines is it is an incredibly competitive and volatile market and i do think that like that's why airlines go bankrupt all the time they try they are brutal and undercutting each other yeah and so that is the good thing about that that market um just one quick thing i flew jet blue

42:12Seth Borko: out to to dublin and i went to the lounge and i'd never been there before at jfk and it was great it was great the wallpaper in the bathrooms is so funny

42:26Sarah Kopit: yeah okay is it a secret do we have are you will you tell us what it is or do you have to fly jet

42:31Seth Borko: blue to find out it is not a secret but i don't have a picture i mean i you know i did try to take some pictures of the wallpaper but it was kind of shiny some pictures were really bad maybe

42:44Sarah Kopit: we shouldn't share pictures from inside a bathroom on our public podcast isn't it since we now know that there actually are listeners if it was just me and you maybe we could have now we know there's

42:52Seth Borko: actual listeners now we've devolved i have the guy i literally have the giggles now but um they are it's like this really beautiful like very fancy looking wallpaper but within the pattern are like new york city street signs and new york city fire hydrants and like all of these like new york city um you know staples in like this very fancy blue wallpaper in the bathroom of the JetBlue Lounge at JFK. So hats off to the design team who pulled that one. It was delightful. I enjoyed it. I had the reaction you wanted me to have when I saw it.

43:38Sarah Kopit: Amazing. Oh, I don't know if Hilton actually reported, Wyndham reported, and I think Hilton just had news about changing its venue, so I'll just quickly correct myself there. But the point is that US RevPar, I think we reported it was up like 11 % in the US. closer to single digits in Europe. So RevPAR, hotel revenue per available room, just continues to be really strong while airline fares are... Airline profits are under pressure. Interesting contrast. Hopefully the lounges will attract more loyal shoppers, like you said.

44:13Seth Borko: Well, now they will. JetBlue will be mobbed. Do you think there is a Cerakopit effect?

44:20Sarah Kopit: Do you think they're going to look at their numbers and the analytics next week and see the sarah copit bump for uh for the lounge i do i do seth

44:28Seth Borko: and uh i i aspire to that listeners so you know mention my name i i want you know where we go there's a there's a goal for like my before retirement i want to i want to get into an earnings report but only for good i don't i i don't want to be the um what was the name of that movie that i don't want to be john carter do you remember the movie john carter with uh the guy that was in friday night lights this was i forget which i forget which studio it was it was like the biggest flop in history yeah i just i remember i was i was working at blueberg at the time we were covering earnings and it was like in x items oh yeah yeah i wonder if um

45:14Sarah Kopit: if I don't want to be X items if the new Tom Cruise movie digger well digger will be will make it to an errands call as well yeah probably probably probably all right I think we're done

45:27Seth Borko: here I think we're done here today thank you everybody for listening see you next time