Oil Hit $100. What Happens to Travel Now?

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Oil hit $100, airlines are under pressure, and Gen Z is not behaving like millennials did.

In this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, Sarah Kopit and Seth Borko unpack what higher fuel prices mean for airline economics, how this week’s travel chaos felt in real life, and why new Skift Research suggests Gen Z may force the industry to rethink some big assumptions.

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Watch This Episode

The number of the week is 100, as the price of oil briefly crossed $100 a barrel. Just, when was it, Seth? Was it this week?

It was Sunday, it was this past week, yeah.

Over the weekend.

So as of this recording, it’s settled about, I don’t know, 85 bucks a barrel, but still that is up 35% from last month. If oil prices stay high, they will have major implications to the global economy.

But first, Seth, what are we going to talk about first?

How excited I am to have you back as a co-host. I had to do that intro by myself last week. I had Gordon as guest host, but I still had to do the intro.

Yeah.

And we don’t air this, but I’ll leak that we had to do multiple takes.

We didn’t do it as cleanly as we did this time.

Well, I am thrilled to be back. Berlin was amazing. ITV was amazing, but glad to be back on the show.

How was your travels to and from Berlin?

I was really worried that the government shutdown would get to you, Sarah.

Right. Well, I mean, it was kind of crazy because, let’s see, so I left like Saturday. I don’t know what the date was, but not last Saturday, but Saturday before where I woke up to the news, we had gone to war with Iran.

Like it was that day. And so I was supposed to get on a, and supposed to and did get on an airplane at like 1130 that morning. You know, I was, I was wondering, like I woke up, you know, normal time.

I was wondering how long it was going to take my mother to text, wondering if I was still going to Germany. And I mean, it was like, it was like an hour and 45 minutes. So, you know, she, she was taking her sweet time.

So, but, you know, went to the airport. I was wondering if it was going to be like super weird at the airport, frankly. But I flew a kind of a small German airline called Condor that I had never, I’ve never actually flown Condor before.

They’re the ones that have the strike planes.

I was going to ask you what you think of the livery, the design of the airplanes.

Like 10 out of 10. I love it.

Yeah, it’s so fun.

It’s so fun. It’s great. I took pictures.

I mean, like, still, I do this. I took pictures of the plane out the window. Of course.

It never gets old. So I flew Condor, but Condor takes off out of Terminal 7 at JFK. Now, most of you will have never gone to Terminal 7.

I certainly have never been to Terminal 7. It’s like Aerolingus, Condor. There was, I think, the Kuwaiti airline does come out of there, and I also took a picture of all of their flights being canceled.

But it’s the smallest, strangest little terminal. That I’ve ever been in New York City. I didn’t even know it was there.

And so, yeah, so it was fine going, but I will say, I mean, I’m not, I probably shouldn’t say this. We have the TSA on the show sometimes, but I am very bad at turning off my phone when they tell me to, like a good journalist.

Like, I pretty much wait until the bars go away. And on the plane, as we were taking off, I got like all the alerts, like just, like we were like on the runway, like moving that the United States had killed Ayatollah Khomeini.

And then it went off, like no more internet.

What a cliffhanger. What a cliffhanger. No.

Like I literally like kind of like screamed at my phone.

And then and then, you know, it was a very long half hour until, you know, I was able to reconnect. So that was going.

You can I ask you, Sarah, you’ve been this is not related to ITV or travel, but you’ve been in use for a long while.

Yeah.

Does this happen to you that I, when I worked in on Wall Street, I had a guy and whenever he would go on vacation, he would buy puts on the S&P 500 because he said, every time I go on vacation, something terrible happens. Is this what happens to you?

When you’re an editor-in-chief, when you travel, is that just when the biggest break in news happens? Is that your curse?

It does seem to be that way. That’s hilarious about buying puts. But yeah, and then I will also say, coming back, like we had talked about how I was really worried because global entry was closed.

Coming back, we didn’t have internet for the whole eight and a half hour plane ride for me.

Do we live in the stone age? Come on.

I know. I had to really take some deep breaths. I had to, and it was during the day.

It wasn’t even at night. It was a daytime flight with no internet for eight and a half hours. No internet.

Oh my God. When we landed at JFK and my phone sprung back to life, I got the alert that Kristi Noem had been fired.

Yeah.

I mean, it was just like, basically, there was a lot of stress on takeoff and landing from ITB for such people who covered the news.

And just to fully connect the dots, I’m sure most of our listeners will realize, but TSA is a function of the Department of Homeland Security. They don’t just do immigration. So Kristi Noem was technically the boss of all of those TSA workers.

And then there was the government shutdown. I have to be honest, Sarah, I haven’t even been traveling and I don’t even know what’s going on. I got whiplash.

Is the government back open again? Is pre-check and global entry working again?

So the government is still in a partial shutdown, as far as I know. As far as I know, as of, let’s see, what is it? 142 on Wednesday afternoon.

Yes, but so TSA pre-check, it was like on again, off again, on again, off again. Battle of the statements out of the Trump administration. That always stayed on.

I will say pre-check was just fine when I went to Oregon. Yep, Global Entry was not though, but luckily I came in to little tiny Terminal 7.

So I wasn’t in the big Terminal 8 where I was like, like I’m going to wait in line for three hours, you know, getting back. But it was a breeze, but now Global Entry, I think as of this morning at 5 a.m., it is back on.

And I wonder, I got to believe that it is connected to Kristi Noem’s departure.

We’ve said on this podcast, in the past, and I think it’s mostly accurate, the reason why government shutdowns end is when you get that real pain at the airport, right? And you would think they should know that.

Like, why would you even shut down the first, I guess it’s a pressure tactic why you shut it down the first place to really break.

But yeah, people don’t care too much about the DMV or the Post Service, but when the airports start to get snarled, that’s when these things have to happen.

Airports are stressful enough, and I think it’s just, I don’t know, it’s just so painful. Like, it’s so painful anyway, and it just makes it just that much more.

And then you start really in, honestly, that’s when you start really rankling with the rich.

Yeah.

With rich people.

Yeah.

Rich people and their money.

That’s a fact, that’s a fact.

And that’s when the government turns back on. So we’ll see.

I am so glad to have you back, Sarah. I miss you. We had, like I said, Gordon was a great co-host.

It’s not him. It’s me. It’s me.

It’s I had to do the intro and all that stuff. So we’re glad to have you back.

And speaking of, I guess, pain and geopolitics, I will say, we published our outlook, we did a webinar in you, we talked about this podcast, and what did we say the greatest risk was on that webinar? What did we say it was? Number one risk?

Geopolitics.

Geopolitics.

And here we are, here we are in Straits of Hormuz. People are worried that oil prices are going to be, they briefly were above 100 dollars per hour, we’re worried that they’re going to go back above it. This is going to matter.

This is not a Middle Eastern issue. This is a global issue.

Well, and it’s an American pocketbook issue now too, because I don’t know, I haven’t filled up my tank actually recently, but I’m almost a little bit afraid to just even look to see what the price of gas is.

And for Donald Trump’s base, I mean, so what did he campaign on? Cheap eggs, no wars.

No wars.

And cheap gas, essentially. Cheap eggs and cheap gas, they come in the same category. And here we are.

Don’t worry, there’s no war and there’s no inflation.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. That’s what I heard.

Yeah.

Well, let me ask you a question, Sarah. How big is the fuel tank in your car?

15 gallons.

How many gallons do you think the US airline fleet fills up? It’s more than 15.

More than 15? I don’t even know. I have no idea.

It’s got to be some astronomical number.

18 billion gallons of fuel. That’s how much the US airline industry burns in any given year. Wow.

Wow. At December of this year, jet fuel was two bucks a gallon. On average, the airlines paid $2.40.

$3 on average for all of last year, 2025. Right now, as of the time of this recording, I think jet fuel is $3.40. So you are there by, they paid an average of $2.40.

It’s currently $3.40 or $3.50, something like that. And that’s an extra dollar on 18 billion gallons of gas. So I mean, it’s actually, we did some analysis.

It was actually a little bit more than a buck. It was like $3.67 coming out of the weekend when oil almost hit $100. It’s fluctuating already this week by the time that we list, you’ll listen to this, it will have moved again.

But the gist of it is that airlines, we did an analysis. Airlines are basically looking at a, call it a, okay, this is an estimate. If gas stays exactly where it is, which it won’t.

And if they fly exactly like they plan to fly this year, which they won’t. But if those two things happened, they’d be looking at like a $24 billion gas bill, extra, incremental gas bill, just in the US alone, let alone globally.

What would that number be globally? I think it could easily, I mean, the US is like what, a third to a quarter of the airline industry globally. So take the number, multiply it by three or four.

So the number could easily, if a gas stays high, it’s like I’d actually easily be 90 to 100 billion extra bucks in gas. So that’s an issue. Can I give you another piece of context here, Sarah?

Please.

Yes.

We said our analysis is something like an extra 20 to 24 billion dollars of jet fuel extra above what they’re ready to pay. What do you think they operate in? How much money did the US airline industry make in 2025?

A gazillion dollars.

They made 13 billion.

So they are potentially looking at an extra gas bill that is more than the entire profits of the entire US airline industry in 2025.

Woof.

Not good.

Not good. All right.

Not good. Yeah.

I’m sure the president has gotten a few texts about this from our friends.

You would imagine, yeah, his friends Airlines for America and Ed Bastion and Scott Kirby, they’ve got to be talking to their folks. Now, that number is not, I want to be clear, like a forecast.

I do want to mention that it’s very important that our intrepid Airlines reporter, Meghna, who has been on this podcast, she watched Scott Kirby talk about this situation at the Punchbowl Conference where he did an impersonation of President Trump.

She saw it happen.

That’s all. Is that?

That’s all I have to say. Continue.

Yeah. Continue. Well, that was it.

That number, 24, 22, 24 billion. Yeah, we will leave it. It’s amazing.

It can’t come to pass because airlines can’t just run in the negative. So they will either have to, one, gas prices will have to come back down. Two, which is not in their control.

Two, they’ll have to fly less, burn less fuel. Or three, they’ll eventually have to raise fares. Those are pretty much the only three options.

Or they go bankrupt, I guess, option four is the same. Yeah, exactly.

Or they just go under, so.

Yeah, yeah. Which in turn, which may well happen, right? That would be the mechanism by which fares would go up.

Right now, part of the reason why fares stay low is because there’s competition. The reason why Spirit Airlines are struggling is because there’s so much competition from New York to Florida. If these airlines start to go bankrupt and there’s one…

What’s the most expensive flight is whenever you’re flying, when there’s only one airline servicing that route, right? Whenever you have to fly American into Charlotte, you know you’re going to get hit.

Yeah, although I will say, you know, there’s just been so much news. Like we were talking before we came on, we’re all very tired. There’s been so much news lately.

One thing that we totally missed, we haven’t even talked about it, like Spirit Airlines, like a Phoenix from the ashes.

Yeah, they’re back, tough time in.

Yes, tough time.

You gotta feel bad for them.

Tough time to be a ultra low cost budget carrier.

Well, it may actually be a great time to be a budget carrier.

If Americans get pinched in their wallet, if those eggs and their trucks are more expensive, I wonder is this like United and Delta have just succeeded at building this premium leisure business.

One of the questions I’ve been asking myself is, how long can this continue? We talk about the K-shaped economy, the divergence between the uber wealthy and the rest of us, but how much longer can that premium leisure try and continue?

If fill up your car is five bucks a gallon, I think that those spirit fairs start to look really attractive.

Although, I don’t know. I guess I’d take the other side of that one. I don’t think the ultra wealthy care about $5 gasoline.

The ultra wealthy don’t.

No.

But even though.

The rest of us do.

Yeah. Oh, well definitely. But the rest of us, I don’t know.

We were forgotten about a long time ago.

Wow. Fair enough.

So speaking about people who have not been forgotten about, let’s talk about Gen Z.

You guys have a new research report out talking about kind of, I don’t know, the generation gap, different trends, different preferences, I would say, basically between Millennials and Gen Z travelers. We’re looking at those two groups specifically.

I know a lot of Millennials. I’m kind of like an elder Millennial, Gen Xer, I don’t know, there’s a word for us, Zenials. I’m a Zenial.

I don’t know very many Gen Zers personally. I’ve got Gen Alpha at home. We’re like Gen X at my house.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s just the youngins here at Skift.

They’re my view.

Some of your new, yes, some of the fresh faces in the editorial department. That’s my, most of my friends are millennial. I’m like very solidly in that core, middle upper millennial bucket.

And so Gen Z was definitely below me. I’m meeting some.

So it’s a vibe, as they would say. Yeah, it’s a vibe. Yeah.

So, but you guys found they have a little, they have different preferences.

Like they’re, they are different travelers than millennials, which I think who have been catered to now for quite some time, or like they were the, you know, new sparkly generation with lots of disposable income.

Well, so that is the, in my mind, the key takeaway. There’s a couple of great key takeaways. Obviously you should go to Skift Research and read it.

But to my mind, the key takeaway is that kids today, that’s what you think. Millennials are the kids these days, and now it’s the Gen Zs are these kids these days. Aren’t all kids always the same?

But no, the kids these days are different from the kids of the last generation. And Gen Z really does, there are commonalities, but they really are developing their own generational personality, and especially as it comes to travel.

Millennials, you know, in addition to love in Harry Potter and, and, you know, the color gray and all that stuff, and pastels, they love to travel. It was just in a really critically important part of their lifestyle.

It was a core part of their identity. Will that be true for the rise in Gen Z generation? Yes, it will.

I mean, let me, let’s not, let’s not be doing gloomier. Yes, it will. But there are some really important caveats.

And actually it comes down to this concept of affordability, of actually left behind, of, of oil prices. So we did this study and I’m going to pull up this chart. I’ll talk you through it if you’re an audio only listener.

If you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see it pop up where we kind of, I think is a great question. We asked about a windfall.

If you just found on the street, 4,000 bucks, if you, if you won the lottery, got it, you know, picked it up from the street, whatever, you got a $4,000 windfall, what would you do with it? And what I liked at this question was we made people choose.

You couldn’t say, I think I would do this. It’s like, you have to pick one and you have to pick the most likely thing you would do and the least likely thing you would do with it. So we made people really express their preferences very clearly.

And what we saw was the top answers, pay for essentials, groceries, rent, save it or invest it.

And then third was take a trip, which is what we’ve been saying all of this time, that people have to pay for essentials, they need to save up, but their number one discretionary expense that they would rather spend their money on is take a trip.

However, let’s look at these dots here. The dark blue dot is Gen Z’s and the light blue dot is Millennials.

And what you actually see is when we look at take a trip, look at how much higher Millennials are on the take a trip bucket, and look how much lower the Gen Z’s are.

And in fact, they would actually also put above taking a trip, paying off debt, and they would also put above a trip, buying clothing, apparel, or accessories.

So all that, the Gen Z sunglasses and their streetwear and all those things that are Gen Z, this is really important to them. This is a big generational shift.

And what we are not seeing is that Gen Z’s are giving up on travel by any means, but we are seeing this, wait a second, paying off debt is higher. Wait a second, shopping is very similar.

There are different priorities, and there’s also less affordability among this generation than there was in the past generation. So this, I think, if you run a travel business, it’s a big deal. Yeah.

I wonder what the things are that they want to buy.

Clothing-wise?

I’m just curious.

No, they’re just like, you know, I guess the clothing, apparel and accessories. But this idea that, at least for millennials, it was like they wanted to have experiences over things. If that’s flipping, I’m just wondering what the things are.

I have a feeling that they are essentials due to affordability. Like, that’s my gut. Like, it’s nothing terribly glamorous.

We don’t want to over-interpolate a single data point or question, but the sense that I get is that the debt is a big piece of it.

If you are an older person and you can hear in this whole student loan conversation, you say, well, how bad is it really? We are starting to see it’s bad.

Yeah.

And then the other, yeah, I mean, it’s bad.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and you saw it in New York City. I mean, we talked about this a lot when New York elected its first Democratic Socialist mayor when Zoran became our mayor.

I mean, that was his platform. And that’s who elected him.

I mean, I think it’s clear that this affordability, it’s a nationwide issue. It’s an everyone issue, but it’s clearly being driven by the Gen Zs. And I also think it’s interesting.

I mean, I won’t claim to be a political expert, but I think it’s interesting. Donald Trump seems to have nine plus lives, political lives, and it’s because he has a very good sense of where the winds are blowing.

And I think it’s interesting that when Zoran, when Mayor Mamdani went to DC and everyone thought Trump’s going to beat him up. And Trump, Trump, they were buddies, because I think he’s starting to reel.

I think politicians who have just have a good sense of it are realizing that this affordability issue is the issue. I don’t know.

Donald Trump likes a winner.

Yeah, he likes a winner. And affordability is a winner, right? That’s what I’m trying to say.

Yeah. But then the other thing they’re paying for is clothes. Are your, we don’t talk about like too much about family.

Are your kids really into fashion? Is that a thing that you’re seeing in the Gen Alpha or they’re friends?

Yeah. Like, yeah, the little one is my 11-year-old. She, like, it just pains me, but she’s like, I want to go to SoHo.

I’m like, why? We’re just going to buy all of your clothes at Old Navy anyway. But, you know, like, so, but she does, she kind, she kind of wants to, like her and her little friends, like to, like to go and look at things.

I don’t see her and her friends as being all that different than, than like we were. It’s kind of that aspirational, you know, I want this, that, and the other thing.

But all of this generational stuff is nuances, right? Like you can’t paint with too broad a brush. I think it’s also stage of life matters.

You know, millennials were probably, millennials have had now quite a while, in some cases, 10, 15, 20 years to pay off their student loans. They are increasingly senior in their jobs. They have married potentially with dual incomes.

And so affordability is less of a concern for them than it is for someone fresh out of college or in their first few working years. So I’m not saying that this is set in stone.

I’m not saying that this is a huge generational shift, nor am I saying that the shift to experiences over things has come to an end. I think Gen Z’s very much value experiences, very much value travel.

But I am, I think we are not raising a red flag, but we are saying that this is a-

A little teeny weeny red flag.

Yeah, a little teeny flag of not a red flag, but of a don’t assume. That’s what we’re saying.

Yeah.

Do not assume that Gen Z’s, we always throw in Gen Z and millennial, right? Do not assume that they are the same. The Gen Z generation, they’re like now 24, 25.

The next decade, they’re going to be, believe it or not, we all get older. It’s crazy. But they will be in their 30s sooner than you realize, and then they will have the real earnings power.

And do not assume that they will have the same behaviors as millennials. And I think if you are, if you’re a destination, a brand, a hotel, an airline, it’s the time.

Now is the time to really start thinking through what your Gen Z strategy will look like. Now that they’re not teenagers anymore, they’re not in college anymore, they’re young, entry-level professionals.

Your five-year plan should include for them to be mid-level professionals. You know what I mean?

So this is so fascinating. What else did you find out about them? Like, did you talk to them about AI?

Because of course we did.

Of course. I talked to everyone about AI. We don’t use AI, isn’t that everything?

I desperately try not to.

Like I desperately try not to. But it does sneak in a little bit. And yet.

Yeah.

And yet.

So what did they say? What did you find?

We definitely asked about AI. What we found. Millennial and Gen Z.

One of the most important question we asked is like, how involved do you want AI to be in your travel life? Like in travel planning. 45% of millennials and Gen Zs said they want to retain full control over their planning and booking of their trips.

38% want shared control. 15% are okay with giving up most control and retaining only minimal control. Just 2%.

Just 2%. That’s like 1 in, you know, 2 in 100 said that they were okay with taking their travel process and handing it over to the machines fully.

Yeah.

I think people assume…

That doesn’t surprise me.

Doesn’t surprise you. It kind of surprised me. I thought they would be, you know, I hear like everyone’s doing their homework with AI, everyone’s brain rot AI.

I would think that they would be more willing to use AI. They’re not.

You know, I will say, you know, to bring up the kids and the youth, I’m not sure what they’re teaching the kids at school, but you know, every time my kids come in and see me using my buddy Claude, who I, you know, talk with most days, they say, mom,

you know, AI is destroying the world. And I’m like, what do you mean, young grasshopper? And, you know, they’re like, it’s terrible for the environment. You know, they’re talking about the water use.

Yeah, yeah, and the electricity stuff.

Yeah.

And so, but like, they’re like my kids, anyway, who are 11 and 14, so like right in that Gen Alpha sweet spot. Like they’re very anti-AI right now. Anyway, this is the message they’re learning.

Is AI the new Facebook?

Where we think it’s for young people, but it’s actually for boomers. We think AI is for young people, but it’s actually for millennials and Gen X.

Perhaps. I mean, it’s all of us that are like, ooh, you know, like literally, my 14-year-old, if he could just fish. This is a child who lives in Brooklyn.

If he could fish all day long, that’s what he would do. And like when they get together, like when they’re here at the house, like especially the girls, you know what they love to do? Play cards.

Like my 75-year-old mother. Like they play cards. This is what they do.

It’s very quaint. I know.

I was just down in Florida and learned how to play Canasta. It’s a fun, I’m learning the beauty of a good card game.

I’m just waiting for them to hear like Pinnacle or Bridge, you know?

Yeah, I wasn’t, yeah.

I think that there is this kind of, there is this kind of, I don’t know if it’s a nostalgia thing, but they, you know what it is, they are not as impressed. With all of this, they are unimpressed. I am still very impressed.

And our tech reporter Adriana just did this great feature on, are we building AI tools for a customer that doesn’t actually exist or actually want these tools?

Are we building AI tools really to show off to investors more so than actual use cases? And this data, we actually shared this data with Adriana, would suggest that that is pretend like… Yeah.

And it all comes back to the affordability piece of it too. You know, one of the things that I’ve been saying about AI, what will AI bring? What will AI do?

What will it mean? I say, let’s flip it. Let’s not ask ourselves these like kind of unknowable what will happen.

I say, what do we know for sure? What do we know for sure? The average American starting a brand new job gets 11 vacation days.

That’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the average. They can work their way up to like 18.

Any of our European listeners are.

They’re just dead. They’re like on the floor. Yeah.

So if you have 11, let’s say you’re Gen Z, you just started your work, you have 11 vacation days, and you have student loan debts, and you have inflation, and you have all this stuff, you need the best possible price.

And by the way, if the trip doesn’t go well, you don’t get to do it again. Even if the trip was free, even if you pay $0, your biggest constraint is your time. Your second biggest constraint is your money.

Everything else is secondary. And so travel, what I say is what we know for sure is that travel will always be a highly considered purchase because the big constraints are gonna be time and money. There’s not really a technical constraint.

So these new technologies might reduce frictions, might make it easier, all this wonderful stuff that in theory should help with more travel. But ultimately, people are gonna be paranoid.

Like, you know, if you’re spending like 10% of your annual salary, which is not unheard of on a trip, I think we found the average American spends 7% of their annual income on travel.

7% of your annual income, 14 days a year, you get one big trip and it costs you a huge amount of your annual salary. It’s not even a matter of you would probably find that very hard to afford.

Yeah, to hand that over and say, I have no involvement in this. Plus, isn’t trip planning kind of fun?

I love it. Even here, like for our trips that we take. I’m like always like many, many months in advance, way too far in advance, like trying to on Google, like trying to find.

I also like flying new airlines.

Just me too.

I just think it’s fun and interesting.

I got this new app. I don’t know if we’re allowed to plug apps or not, but I got this new app that tracks all of your flights. It’s called Flighty.

And I loaded all my old flights and it gives you stats about how many different airlines you’ve flown. Oh, cool. And I’m like, I love it.

I’m like collecting like track on my smasher. That’s a new air. That’s going to be a new airline for the app.

You know, the thing that Condor did not have, which I just, I kind of couldn’t believe it.

I was, I give them low marks for this, is that they didn’t have like anywhere for me to like, like store my bag. And so I had to put it in the overhead, like, bin.

And I’m like, like they wouldn’t even let me put it like underneath the seat in front of me. It had to go up. And that was really annoying.

Like with my computer in it and everything.

That sucks.

I mean, it’s just, it’s like, it’s like the weird, those weird little things, right? Like they’re like, no, it can’t go under the seat in front of you. I’m like, why on earth not?

In every airplane I have ever been on, in the history of my days, that is where my backpack has lived. And they were like, no, for takeoff and landing, it has to go in the overhead.

It’s almost like the opposite. Like they’re like, if you, if I put my backpack in the overhead, I’m going to get purity looks because I’m taking up space for the overhead, for the wheel luggage.

If you say German thing. I don’t know.

Yeah, German efficiency has come to a logical conclusion, I guess.

All right.

Let’s talk, yeah, let’s talk about some few of these little fun games we like to play towards the end of the podcast. Myth versus fact. I thought it was a good one to start with because we talked about oil prices.

Yeah. I kind of got into this on LinkedIn a little bit. And me and Sarah on LinkedIn, we post, we’ll engage, we’ll say hi.

We’re talking about oil prices. We’re talking about how much tickets would need to rise to offset it.

I don’t know if I actually said that earlier, but in order to cover a $24 billion incremental bill, you’d have to raise airline tickets by like 10 percent. And we got a little bit of a debate online and it was a good one.

And I was reminded that really, it’s not oil prices that set fares, it’s supply and demand.

And there was a little debate online about, well, will higher oil prices actually kill demand such the extent that you might see fair prices fall even with higher costs?

I think it’s probably a little bit of both, but I think it’s like, for instance, no matter how high oil prices are, flights to Dubai are probably going to be dirt cheap because there’s going to be such a little demand for travel to the Middle East in

the next couple of months. But in the US, where there’s demand, but costs have gone up and therefore, maybe airlines fly less, they go bankrupt, they merge, they consolidate, they cut back. Let’s probably see prices go up.

But I think myth versus fact, there is a myth that higher oil prices automatically means higher ticket prices. That’s not true. The fact is that oil has a major role into both supply and demand, but it doesn’t set the fair prices.

I thought that would be a nice little economic divergence in the Smith First Fact section for today. Sorry, sorry about that one.

I love a little economic theory throughout my day, Seth. So thank you very much for that. Got any tips for us?

Travel tips?

Well, I don’t, but you were just on the road, and you were telling me, I want to know your tips, because I actually never been to ITV Berlin, and I’m told it is insane. What are the tips, Juvenile tips for how to survive ITV?

I mean, they have beer in the beer hall. I would say that that’s probably a good one. Yeah, have a drink.

I went in as a complete amateur. It was the first time I had ever been there. It was great, but it was just the most overwhelming like conference slash trade show experience I had ever had.

I mean, I’ve never been to one that big, that crazy, like the way, like so many people. I was telling our, you know, on my team, I was looking for our colleague Kate Anderson in Hall 9, and I never found her. I walked around forever.

And I almost had to sit down because I was getting so overwhelmed. I was like, okay, calm down. It’s okay.

But like literally, I asked other people, I asked them, they’re like, well, you have to go up and down and up and down and over and through.

So I am not a very good person to ask for tips about ITP other than it was a great show, but maybe do a little bit of mapping beforehand. I did not do this. Learn from my mistakes.

I did not try to navigate my routes before going to the event. Well, mostly because I’ve never had to do that before. So yeah, so, but it was a great show.

Berlin was fantastic. I’ve never been to Berlin.

Really? Yeah. Did you get to see the city at all?

I did.

So on Tuesday morning, I took some time, which I usually don’t do actually on business trips, but because I had never been, I’m kind of a history buff. So I went to, I remember the day the Berlin Wall fell, I was homesick from school.

And I remember telling my dad that, you know, I was watching the news, Berlin Wall, you know, no more. And he was like, he’s like, sorry, I was in eighth grade. He’s like, don’t make things up, you know.

But on the TV. So I went to the East Side Gallery, which is where the remnants of the wall are. And I went to Checkpoint Charlie, I bought a-

Did you get a stamp?

On my desk.

No, but I got a 20-year-old mug.

Nice.

And I said, you are leaving the American quarter because I just had to. But it was-

What a crazy piece of history.

Yeah. Oh, man. And you know what I didn’t realize?

I think, I don’t know, for those of us who were not around during that era, I kind of conflated maybe the Berlin Wall with World War II too much. Yeah. And it’s a completely different section of history.

You know, the Cold War, like way after. I would have thought, if you would have asked me, like now I know because I saw it on all of the monuments, like when the Berlin Wall went up. Like what do you think the Berlin Wall went up?

It’s in the 50s because it’s the Berlin Airlift, right?

Because they do the airlift in like 1956, something like that.

I thought it was 1961.

1961?

You could be wrong. But like it was way later than I thought.

1961, you’re right.

I would have said the late 40s, like after the war, after the war but like in that kind of almost immediate post-war era. But no, it was 1961 to 1989. I was like, wow, that’s not what I thought it was going to be.

And like I said, I would fancy myself somebody who would know such things, but no.

They just opened a brand new Berlin airport. Well, I’m googling it now. I’m doing my own little fact checking.

But the old airport, 1948, was the Berlin Airlift where there was a blockade. It just wasn’t enforced with a wall. A wall.

The Soviets tried to cut it off and we flew in, the Americans and the British flew in supplies. And that airport only just closed a couple of years ago. There’s a whole brand new Berlin airport.

And the one that they replaced, I think it was replaced in 2020, they only just replaced during the pandemic. That airport was the airport from the Berlin Airlift. Wow.

Which is like, I don’t know, I love how these pieces pie together. Did you by any chance see the, speaking of Iran or Babylon and Assyria, did you see the Pergamon Museum by any chance?

I didn’t, no.

When next year, when you’re back.

Next time.

It’s incredible. It’s really a great museum.

Yeah. So not enough time.

I have a tip for ITB. Okay. Go see the keynote speakers.

I heard there was an excellent keynote at ITB this year. Yeah.

There you go. Good deal, Seth. Thank you.

Now you’re going to make me blush.

The joke is that Sarah gave the keynote at ITB. Yeah. She’s being modest.

I got one more. Because I know you’re a movie buff. And I think we’re going to talk about it.

But have you ever seen the movie The Lives of Others?

Oh, yes.

That to me was an incredible movie, and that was where I learned about the difference between the Stasi and all that stuff.

The Stasi.

Yeah.

Oh, man. That movie had such an impact.

Same.

Yeah.

It was incredible. That’s one of those movies where you just, you don’t stop thinking about it. Yeah.

No, it’s an old movie.

I’m still thinking about it, though. I still bring it up in conversation as I just did. Yeah.

That’s a great one. You see any of the movies for this year? Any of the new ones?

Yeah.

So I was shocked when I was looking at the list, the Oscars is this weekend. I don’t know what’s going on with Oscar voters. Usually, my movies, I’m a huge horror movie fan.

The freakier, the better. Like I’m all in, and so many of my movies are on the best picture list this year. So Sinners, Bagonia, Frankenstein.

I saw F1, which is its own just separate bread pit kind of thing. But yeah, so I think I really want to see Hamnet, but I feel like that’s the kind of movie where you just have to be in the right mood for that one.

Yeah, yeah, I want to see all of them. I haven’t watched the Leonardo DiCaprio one yet, even though it’s always like… Yeah, calling for me on Netflix.

What about you?

I have to admit that I’m not as big a movie buff as you are. I saw the only one I saw, which is going to be so embarrassing, is the F1 movie, which is such a…

The F1 movie was good. I mean, it got nominated for Academy Award.

I loved it. I loved it.

I thought it was fantastic.

Yeah, it was so good. It’s a giant marketing piece and it worked. It got me interested in F1.

Absolutely.

We did our Global Forum East in the Yas Marina Raceway in Abu Dhabi.

And I was there and I was like, huh. And then I watched it again. I was like, I wish I’d watched this before I went, because I would be so much more interested.

That’s what I was just going to say.

I, like, my biggest regret was that I went to that party and had not watched that movie first.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m, and then I think horror movies, have you seen, are you going to see The Bride?

Because there’s two Frankenstein horror movies. I think one’s done in Oscar.

Yeah, I didn’t like the Yelba Del Toro one, but I love Maggie Gyllenhaal and I love Jesse Buckley. So I am definitely going to see The Bride. I’m going to pick Sinners to win.

Sinners to win?

I hear it so good.

Such an unusual film. Like, super strange in so many ways. It’s a musical, ladies and gentlemen.

As opposed to the totally normal Begonia, which is a totally normal, not weird at all.

Oh, I loved that one, but I got the twist.

Oh, yeah.

That was my big issue with it, is I figured it out too soon.

All right.

So my winner has to be the only one I’ve seen, which is F1, although I think Marty Supreme would be another interesting choice. You’re going for Sinners.

Yeah, I’m going for Sinners.

We’ll see who our winner of the week is. Loser of the week. Do you have any losers of the week, Sarah?

So, oh my gosh.

So I like a leaky White House as much as every other journalist can. As a journalist can. But I must say today’s exclusive from The Washington Post, congratulations Washington Post on this one.

I would say the loser of the week has to be Pete Hegseth.

What was the story?

So yeah, it has nothing to do with the war, really.

So not for the reasons you might think, but because apparently, their photographers have been banned from the Pentagon because there were some unflattering pictures, according to people, multiple people familiar with this situation.

So yeah, there are some flattering, unflattering pictures of the Secretary of Defense. So no more photographers in the Pentagon press room. So that’s all.

I will leave that without comment. That is, that’s my pick.

So, wow. All right, let’s wrap it up. Let’s make a quick bet.

We want to bet on oil prices. We want to bet on, what do you want to bet on?

Yeah. Well, let’s bet on the length of the war. I think it’s going to end sooner rather than later.

That’s my prediction.

I think.

So let’s see. This is going to air on Friday.

Friday the 13th. Speaking of horror movies. Speaking of horror movies, this is going to air on Friday the 13th.

So let me pull up the calendar here.

So I think it’s going to be over by the 20th.

Okay.

Of March.

Okay. I’ll take the other side of that bet. I’ll take the other side of that bet.

All right. Okay. We’ll see.

Until next time.

We will see.

All right.

That’s it for this week. Thank you everybody for listening.

We’re so glad to have you back.

See you next week.

See you next week.

Thank you.