// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

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Brian Mackey: It's The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey, and as we approach the summer months, Americans are starting to think about where they want to go on vacation. Things look a little different this year, however, particularly if you are paying for gas as part of your trip. As of Friday, May 22nd, when we're recording this, according to AAA, the average price of gas in Illinois is $4.98 a gallon. OK, you're spending more at the pump for the road trip. Airlines are spending more on jet fuel, trains are spending more on diesel. With that in mind, we're gonna talk today to Mark Wolters again for some advice on summer travel. By day, he's a teaching associate professor of business administration, also academic director of the marketing major in the [Gies] College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also runs the travel-oriented YouTube channel, Wolters's World. Mark, welcome back to The 21st Show. Thanks for being with

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Mark Wolters: us. Hey, Brian, thanks for having me back.

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Brian Mackey: So in order to make our schedules work, we tape this conversation on Friday. So no calls today for this part of the show at least, but we did send out a text. For this, you can join our listener texting group by texting the word "talk" to 217-803-0730. We heard from John in Rockford who says, "The best way to liberate yourself from high gasoline prices is to liberate yourself from the automobile. I've been touring and otherwise transporting myself on my bicycle since I rid myself of my last automobile in 1997. Since then, I've enjoyed bike touring vacations in 14 states and 9 foreign countries. It's cheap. It's healthy," he says. All right, so that's one way to travel. You can let us know what you thought about this talk@21stshow.org. All right, Mark, what are your travel plans this summer?

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Mark Wolters: We got a lot of stuff going on. We've got a trip to Europe. We're gonna be going from northern [France] — sorry, northern Italy to southern Portugal, stopping along the way, seeing friends, doing a bunch of filming and taking in some good culture and food while we're on the way. We've got some concerts we're gonna go to here this summer around the U.S. My youngest has gotten into classic rock, which always breaks your heart when it becomes classic rock, but we're going to see a few old bands.

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Brian Mackey: The definition of classic rock keeps getting closer and closer to the stuff I grew up with.

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Mark Wolters: Exactly. He's like AC/DC and Rush. I'm like, sure, so we're going for those. And we're gonna have some fun with that and then, you know, some family trips around, so we're doing some stuff in the U.S. A lot of really good stuff for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. So there's a lot of fun things going on this summer.

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Brian Mackey: So this European trip you mentioned, what does it take to make something like — cause that sounds like a monumental undertaking, right? Multiple countries. Domestic travel within Europe. How do you make that happen? How do you plan that?

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Mark Wolters: So usually what I'll do is kind of beforehand I'll have a rough timeline of how many — how much time I'm gonna be gone, you know, two or three weeks, four weeks, however it's gonna be. But then I kind of think about, OK, what's the main place I want to go? What's the main theme I want to have? So this one, it was kind of like my youngest son, he wanted to go to Monaco and Andorra because he'd never been there. So we had our goals and then kind of built it around there. What's going to be the best way to kind of go through the places, and then we get to see our friends in Italy and our friends in Portugal. So kind of like a [friendcation] kind of thing. And I looked at flights like, hey, what can we get? And a lot of times like flying to like Venice or Lisbon — kind of these secondary cities — can be more expensive than flying to Paris or Rome or whatever. But when we booked, this is before the gas prices got crazy, the flights are actually relatively affordable just going straight to Venice. And so we booked there and we came back from Lisbon and had that kind of setup.

And so once we had our flights and what we wanted to do booked, then it was just a matter of let's figure out the schedule. How many days we like to spend in a place. I usually like to be at least three days in a place because if you go in two or less, you spend most of your time like moving stuff and repacking and packing. So by having three days, you get in, you can throw your luggage in the hotel room, go see stuff for the evening, and when you come back that first [night], then you can get things out and then explore for two full days in the city, then pack up the morning and go.

So we do that. And I know for some people like, well, what about, how do you get around? What's cool now is everything you can book online. Every train, every car rental place — if you want, I mean, you can hire drivers that will take you to different places, whether for day trips, or we're going from [Aix-en-Provence] to Barcelona, and I looked at the prices for the trains, the times, and it was like actually a better deal for us to hire a driver to take us because we get to take all our luggage, they pick us up at the door, drop us off at the door, and we get a nice little day trip in the middle. We get to see a town in Spain. So it kind of worked out, but we have like a combination of, you know, EasyJet flights and trains and drivers and, yeah, going around on our own.

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Brian Mackey: Are you — when you travel to a place like Europe, I think a lot of people, maybe they're looking for that name-brand comfort, at least on their early trips, right? Do you go to a Marriott or a Hilton or something? Are you doing Airbnbs? Are you using like [a local driver service] versus like something that's a little more recognizable to people?

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Mark Wolters: So the Marriotts and Hiltons are usually pretty a lot more expensive than local hotels in Europe, whereas here you're gonna stay at a Hampton Inn or a Holiday Inn. Over there, if you're gonna stay at the Hilton, all of a sudden the prices are significantly more and you have a lot more independent hotels in Europe. And so we're staying — a lot of places we're staying is like an independent hotel like the Crown Hotel. Like, oh, the Crown — from like Holiday Inn because it has a crown? No, no, it's just called the Crown Hotel. You know, it's the Key Hotel. Like, we'll go look online and what's great is you can look online and you can use like TripAdvisor to find hotels, but I always recommend, remember, anybody can write a review on TripAdvisor. Go and find hotels that look good for you, then go look them up at like booking.com, where only people that actually stayed there can actually write a review, and that's gonna be a lot more realistic. Cause you can always get somebody like, oh, hey guys, write nice reviews for me, or somebody's, you know, ex is trying to get back at them and writes bad reviews. You want to have people that actually stayed there, and I find those reviews to be better.

And then what we end up doing is we end up booking direct with the hotel because if anything happens — like if anything happens you have to cancel, you can talk directly with the hotel. They can work with you cause they have your money. But if you go through a third party like an Expedia or Bookings or something, you have to go through them and sometimes they have more restrictions. And that could be for tours as well. We had a tour in Spain we were going on. I just got an email yesterday like, hey, we have to cancel it, but we can't cancel it as the tour company. You have to go through [Viator] and cancel through them. So it took me literally two days to get it canceled, so it's kind of frustrating, but I couldn't get the original thing with them. That's why I had to go the [Viator] route. So just be aware of that.

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Brian Mackey: What about Airbnbs? Is that an option?

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Mark Wolters: In Europe, the thing is, you've probably heard about the protests like in Spain about, you know, Airbnbs and apartment rentals because a place like Barcelona — I mean, I used to, I lived in Lisbon for five years. I had my Ph.D. there, and I will tell you, all of my friends have had to leave the center of Lisbon because all the apartments, they've been priced out because it's like, wait, I can do a weekend. A British family can come or a British couple can come for the weekend, and they'll pay an entire month's rent in one weekend. So like, why should I rent this out to somebody? So my friends have all had to move out. Like we're going back this summer and we're doing two hotel rooms because I felt bad. I'm like, if we stay in an apartment, I know I'm probably taking one of my friends' apartments, you know. And so that's one of those things. That's where you're seeing a lot of the pushback. And a lot of that is because like some places — there were like Lisbon for a long time had no good hotels. There was good hostels, but no hotels, so you didn't have any other options. And so sometimes it's one of those things like you're looking at Barcelona, there's not a lot of cheap hotels. And so you end up looking for those Airbnbs because it's just like, I can't afford some of these hotel options, but that apartment rental might be a better financial option.

So we will stay at those, but we try to look at — we'll use like VRBO or [Vrbo], because those are usually more like, this is developed as a vacation rental versus, oh, this is an apartment that I — I bought five apartments to kind of, you know, [rent] off on people and do these things. So that's one of the things you kind of have to think about and kind of compare, because they are impactful when you — especially in cities like Barcelona, Lisbon, you can see the impact it has. Other places where it's, you know, if you're going to Hilton Head, those places were built to be vacation rentals, so it's kind of more of an OK thing.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. You know, with all the — how do I put this? International tension happening right now, you know, Americans are maybe not as universally beloved — not that they ever were, but maybe a little less so now, especially in certain European cities. I wonder how you think about that as you are, you know, doing these journeys.

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Mark Wolters: Well, I won't lie to you. Every — so I've been traveling since the first Clinton administration. And every single president we've had, people have complained to me about them. So it doesn't matter what side of the political party, they've always complained. But the thing is, what you usually get is people are better there at separating the politics from the people, and they know that you're a person, you're not a politician, and therefore they'll complain to you. But I mean, I've — it's been maybe two times in my entire life where I've had any issues because I was an American abroad, and both those types of people that were causing the ruckus were drunk. So I haven't had too many issues. I know some people are like, I'm going to wear a Canadian flag. I'm like, you don't have to do that. If you're a good, respectful tourist, you'll be fine. If you're staying in the respectable places, you're eating at the restaurants, they're gonna appreciate that. You're going to see the culture — that's gonna be much more appreciated than people that will do like, you know, an under-the-table kind of Airbnb and then you're like, just going to Aldi and buying food there and not putting any money in the economy. Those are the ones that people kind of get upset with, or you're making a fool of yourself out there, you know. But if you're being a respectful tourist, people are more than happy with that because it's part of their economy.

You know, like some of these cities that had a lot of protests about overtourism, they scared off the tourists and now they're like, oh, we don't have any money now. Please come back, please come back. And that's one of those things — it's trying to find the right balance of it. And I think if we actually explored more, you'd have a better chance of seeing and not having to deal with [overtourism]. Like last summer, we spent four weeks driving from Poland to Albania. There was no overtourism. Everywhere we went was safe, no problems anywhere. Had a great time. But those aren't the places that the Instagrammers go, the influencers go so much. So that's why you'll see the Instagram-famous places will get overrun because it's all people see online. They miss out. I mean, it's not — these aren't hidden gems. They just don't seem — they don't know about those places, so.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. Well, we've been talking about like European travel. I think that's gonna sound maybe out of reach to a lot of people, especially given the prices now. So let me share another text message. We got — this is from Christopher in Brimfield who says, "We had planned on going to Canada, but the airfare cost stopped that plan." So, Mark Wolters of Wolters's World on YouTube, how have you seen the price of fuel affecting how much people are having to pay for travel?

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Mark Wolters: I'll tell you, so I already saw a weakness in flights for this summer when I was booking last December, because usually when I'm booking that — that Venice flight would usually run me about $2,000. Like the flight I was looking for, I was expecting to be like, oh, $2,000. And when I bought it, I got it for like $1,200, which is still a lot of money. But I'm like, wow, that's a lot less than I expected. And I saw that weakness, and the prices were still very low until the oil prices shot up. And now it's more than that. Like now I'm like, oh, I'm glad I bought then because if I was looking to buy tickets now, I'd be like, you know what, maybe we're gonna do — wait, a road trip? Oh man, now I got $5 gas when I'm going places. So it is a really, really tough thing out there. And I have seen that go up.

And the thing is, with that, you see people saying, you know what, maybe I'm not gonna fly over to the World Cup, or maybe, you know what, I'm not gonna fly to L.A. to see a game at [SoFi] or the Los Angeles Stadium, however they're calling it for the World Cup. And you're seeing that because it's not just the price of flights that have gone up. You know, you're looking at some of the events going on, like the World Cup, the prices to go to World Cup games — it's insane. Like, I was so excited when we got the World Cup with Canada and Mexico. I'm like, oh, we're gonna go, like, what state do you want to try to go see? Who do we want to go see wherever we can go. And we put into all of the different like lottery things. Best deal I got was $3,000 per person in Houston. And I'm like, we're a family of four. I can't afford that. Like, sorry guys, we're just gonna watch at home. And you'll see that in terms of they'll say, oh, the sales are brisk. I'm like, I expect there'll be some empty stadiums or relatively empty stadiums, or they'll be last-minute like deals or giveaways just to fill up the stadiums.

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Brian Mackey: I was reading something in — I think it was in The Athletic not long ago — how prices are beginning to seeming to come down, because there's so little foreign travel here, people don't — they either can't get in or they don't feel comfortable coming here.

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Mark Wolters: Well, and also — and I know people go on the political side of things — there's also the hotels. The hotels were literally, and we're talking triple normal rates in some places. Like you're looking when you want to go. I mean, I talked to a number of people, they're like, yeah, we live in Oklahoma. We're gonna drive down for the day to go watch a game in Arlington. It's like a six-hour drive. I'm not paying those prices because it was so much more, and then required how many nights? Cause what you realize is when they're doing these like higher prices, a lot of times they lock you in not for one night, but for four or five nights. And you're like, yeah, OK, I can pull a — what's usually a $200 hotel room — for $600 one night. But I can't do it for four, you know, like that's where people don't realize it's like, hey, we have to factor a lot more things into — how much the prices have gone. And if you look at places like Las Vegas, who price themselves out of a lot of tourists, that's what happened with the U.S. tourism when it comes to the World Cup.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. So do you have any other advice for if people do want to see the World Cup this summer, or is it just like it's probably out of reach?

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Mark Wolters: So one thing I would say, don't stay in the city where the game is. Stay, you know, like Kansas City when they're having their ones — you know, you can stay in St. Louis, do the three-hour drive over, which — we're in the U.S. so a three-hour drive is nothing. I'll go up to Chicago. I mean, I'll go three hours to go see my mom, have lunch and drive back, so no big deal. That's one thing. One thing, if you don't already have your tickets, just don't go onto those secondary markets that are just price gouging like crazy. Cause if you're gonna go to like a Curaçao match, those prices will come down. However, if you want to go see like — I don't know, if it's like Spain versus France — those tickets are gonna be insane no matter what. So look for some of those — if you just want the experience, look for some of those smaller country matches because those will come down, and you'll still be able to hopefully find some better prices later on because how they've released the tickets, it always looks like there's no [availability].

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Brian Mackey: Let me reintroduce our conversation. If you're just joining us, this is The 21st Show. We're talking about summer travel with an Illinois-based YouTuber, Mark Wolters of Wolters's World, a million-follower channel. He's also an associate professor in business administration, teaches marketing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In order to make schedules meet, I spoke with him last week. More to come after a short break. This is The 21st Show. Stay with us.

It's The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're speaking with Mark Wolters. By day, he's teaching associate professor of business administration, also academic director of the marketing major in the [Gies] College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For the sake of our conversation today, he also runs the travel YouTube channel, Wolters's World. We're talking about the summer travel season, where you might go, how to save some money amid these rising fuel prices. In order to accommodate Mark's schedule, we taped this conversation last week. So no calls for this part of the show, but we did reach out to our listeners in our texting group, which you can join, by the way, by sending the word "talk" to 217-803-0730. Jesse in Mattoon said, "This year we plan on dispersed camping in beautiful Shawnee National Forest. We'll drive an SUV loaded with gear. Normally we would drive to [Jax] Beach, Florida, but fuel costs are a big deterrent. Happy travels." Jesse says. Thanks for the message, Jesse. You too can join our texting group. Again, send the word "talk" to 217-803-0730.

All right, here's the rest of my conversation with Mark Wolters. As people are trying to save money this summer, what other sort of tips would you offer in terms of, you know, travel budgeting in this high-price environment?

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Mark Wolters: Yeah, well, one, I would definitely look at where you're thinking about going. Be open to where you're gonna go. You may have had yourself, this is our Orlando summer, this is our Europe summer. You know, maybe push — because honestly, if I wouldn't have had our tickets already booked at a good price, I would have been like, you know what, we're just doing U.S. travel this summer. You know, like for us, we're not going down to Orlando to go to Epic Universe. We're going to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. You know, we're doing a trip there. We're going to Columbus, Ohio — the [COSI], you know, like these kind of things, we've changed what we're looking at.

So be adjusted to, and realize, what used to be maybe your 10-day vacation — maybe instead of leaving Friday after work and coming back Sunday night, maybe you're leaving Sunday night and you're cutting out two nights at hotels. All of a sudden right there, you're saving — maybe $500. If you've got a family of four or five, you gotta get a couple of hotel rooms, or you gotta eat and do that — that can save a bit there. But there are still deals that are out there, and I think that's important. And so when you're looking about booking like train tickets or hotels, booking ahead can save because if you're waiting at the last minute, you're like, hey, we're gonna go last minute to Florida or Orlando — those places are always gonna be busy. Those prices are gonna get higher the closer you get. But if you're going to some of the secondary things, you're gonna go caving in Southern Indiana or in Missouri, you know, those things can give you an option where, hey, I can still get to Holiday World and I can still get a good deal there.

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Brian Mackey: What about, I mean, you know, little cost-saving things — you think packing a sandwich on a trip, or is that like you get into kind of silly time when you're getting into

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Mark Wolters: that. Here's the thing. I'm not saying, you know, go to a restaurant and then ask for water and some lemons and sugar and make your own lemonade, but there are things you can do. Like instead of going — you know, everyone loves hitting the gas station to get all the candies and stuff — might be better is if you're going to do your normal grocery shopping, maybe you figure, hey, what kind of snacks we want and you buy it there. So you get — because instead of getting one candy bar, yeah, you're getting 16 candy bars, it's almost the same price, not that bad. But you know, you find something you can spread it out. So it could be like instead of grabbing that bag of Doritos, you go and get the, you know, the lunch thing where it comes with 16 little bags. You put, you know, eight of those — you have a little bag in the car, you put eight of those in there. You go and you have your little cooler, you put your sodas in there, because honestly, sometimes, you know, you get a six-pack of soda for the price of one of those half liters at a gas station. So those little things — people don't realize like little things like that add up, you know. It's not just the, oh, don't drink your Starbucks, that'll save everything. No, you can have your Starbucks occasionally, but if there's little things you can do — you know, saves you 20 bucks here and there. You save 20 bucks every single day for a week. Guess what? You got a hotel room.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, what about, um, you know, this kind of dovetails too with transportation in cities, right? I remember the first time I went to New York City, I took an Uber from LaGuardia to Manhattan. It was like 50, 60 bucks, and I learned that's cheap now. Well, yeah, this is a long time ago. But I learned on the way back it was like a $2.50 train and bus transfer, super easy. I learned my lesson on that. Went to Dallas this year, took public transit from the airport. It was not a great experience. I'll just leave it at that. It was late at night. That transit is not nearly as well-used as, you know, it is in New York City, and we did end up taking an Uber back to the airport for various reasons there. How do you advise people to sort of investigate public transit when they're going to a city, or other options if you're not coming in with your own car?

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Mark Wolters: Yeah, so obviously the research — I mean, literally just put in airport transfer, you know, from where you want to, like Rome to city center or O'Hare to the Loop, or, you know, DFW to Fort Worth — wherever your hotel is, and see what's there. Because sometimes hotels might have a transfer. But what I've actually done a lot of times if I have like a hotel, I'll ask them, hey, what's the best way to get to your hotel? Because if they don't have a transfer, they're like, well, you can do a taxi, there's this — but then they'll, because they'll give you the option. You always ask them, what would you do if you were me? Because that's giving them the freedom to say, look, you got four people with suitcases, don't take the subway. Like, it's not gonna be comfortable for you. What you might want to do is take that, you know, tram. Like, you're in Lisbon, there is a subway that's really great, but it doesn't go to a lot of places you're probably gonna stay. So it's like, it might be better to take the taxi that time. So that can be helpful. Because one of the things that people don't realize, there's always a lot of options.

And I would say if you are a family going, pre-booking an airport transfer doesn't cost that much more than just getting a taxi, if you already know you're gonna do the taxi. And this way, like if you're going to Cancún, when you come to Cancún, there's 9,000 people trying to sell you a timeshare, right? But if you get there and they're holding up a sign — Mark Wolters or Wolters's family — oh, that's my ride is here. You get to walk right through. It's all right there. Cuts out a lot of the headache, especially if you're not sure how to get to your hotel, just knowing that that's kind of taken care of. Like we're setting up our transfers for our Europe trip, and it's like, OK, well, the [ES] system is taking like an extra hour or two. They're like, don't worry, just give us your, just give us your, you know, flight information and we'll be there at the right time. Don't worry. I'm like, all right, cool. And therefore, I don't have to worry about trying to get my friend. OK, well, you got to take off work, but I might be there two hours late cause I don't know. Having that kind of taken care of really relieves a lot of stress.

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Brian Mackey: I wanted to also ask you about domestic airlines. I don't know about you. I feel like we might be approaching one of those big inflection points that we've been through several of in our lifetimes now, because you've got, you know, United and American Airlines talking about teaming up. Spirit Airlines collapsed. Southwest sort of made a change that sort of fundamentally altered what a lot of people loved about what Southwest used to be. I wonder how you're thinking about — you know, let's start with Spirit, right? Permanently grounded their flights after filing for bankruptcy. If someone had that in their plans, you know, where are they at now? How do they —

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Mark Wolters: Well, if you were Spirit, your flights are gone. You're basically waiting — like they should have, you should have gotten a refund already on your credit card or your bank statement. If not, it's gonna take a while to go through the bankruptcy court, but keep all information you have. Go and print out those emails in case they somehow [reappear], so you have it and have a file so you can have something to like turn in like, hey, here's stuff, here's what I need. And the thing is, that's a lot of people — they'll buy the ticket and then later on they'll have the add-ons like, oh, I want lunch or I want, you know, extra baggage. Have all those separate ones too together.

So there is that. Another thing is like if you were one of those flights that got canceled, now all those people that got canceled, they're trying to get that other Frontier flight or that Allegiant flight, and that's driven up prices. And I personally did not fly Spirit, but I appreciated what they did because they made travel available to people who before couldn't afford travel. You know, like when it's a $500 flight to Florida, and now it's only $100 round trip, that opens up Florida and travel to a lot more people. And I appreciated that that's what it did for people, you know. And that's one thing I feel bad about because with less competition, prices go up, you know, there's less options. Prices go up. And so I think that's where you're going to see some of the things.

And if you look at it, pretty much all airlines in the U.S. domestics, people are complaining, you know, the service isn't as good, the cheapening of the airline miles — remember, you know, 10 years ago you had 50,000 miles, you're going to Europe? Now 50,000 miles, I might get to fly from Champaign to Chicago on the wrong day, you know, like so you're like, wait a minute,

[00:26:36]
Brian Mackey: get a free drink or something.

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Mark Wolters: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Every drink. Yeah, but if you want alcohol, it's a few more miles, you know, like these kind of things. And that's one thing I'm very sad about because you're gonna see what people were — used to be extremely loyal to airlines. Like people, they ride or die Southwest, ride or die Delta. And now, what I loved about Southwest isn't there anymore. What I loved about Delta isn't there. I don't — you don't feel appreciated. That's when people start wandering. That's when their eyes start looking around. That's why you'll see deals — oh, well, if you were a platinum member at, you know, Delta, we'll let you switch over to American and we'll give you platinum for three months and see if you like being with us. You know, these kind of things will let you transfer. Like, oh, OK, well, maybe I will do that because I no longer feel like I'm appreciated or that the benefits are worth it anymore.

And we can — I mean, there's a lot of economic side of these things, like, cause you know, if you look at Delta, they make so much of the money off the credit card fees. That's why people feel that their, you know, their program isn't so much about frequent flyers as it is frequent chargers, you know. So there's a lot of things that can go into that. And I think that's where a lot of — as a marketer, that's where a lot of brands, not just airlines, are really messing up. They're destroying that goodwill they spent decades building to basically make an extra 10 cents off people that weren't flying with them before. And now those people that would pay 20% more just to fly with them are like, you know what, maybe I will look around for an American flight or a Delta flight or a United flight instead of, you know, ride or die Southwest or ride or die United.

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Brian Mackey: And maybe the Southwest thing is close to my heart because my family did use that a lot over the years, and it just feels like so far from what, you know, people had grown to love about them. I gather a lot of people didn't like their boarding system, but that's fine. How do you think about this sort of the nickel-and-dime era of — right, like you want legroom — certain airlines, I mean, you know, Allegiant, which people may be familiar with because it now flies to a lot of central Illinois cities and gets to places in Florida. But you know, you wanna print a ticket, you wanna choose your seat, you wanna choose a better seat. You wanna choose a slightly better seat, you know,

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Mark Wolters: or you wanna have a carry-on bag that's bigger than just a personal item,

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Brian Mackey: right, right. It's nickel-and-dimed. I mean, do we just accept that that's what it is now and sort of like almost blind yourself to that quoted price, knowing that's not what you're gonna pay?

[00:28:56]
Mark Wolters: I think this is one of those things cause like, for example, in Europe, people got so upset with the 1-pound flights to the U.K. or €1 flights to the U.K., and then you'd spend literally €2 — so like $2.20 — to fly round trip to London. But then when you got the checkout, it would be like $100. You're like, what's going on? Oh, well, taxes and fees and — oh you want to use a credit card? I mean, literally, you had to pay to pay. Oh, if you're going to use a debit card, it's an extra $5. You use a credit card, it's an extra $10. And it got to the point that they actually changed the laws in the European Union that they had to actually put the full fare — like this is what it's going to be. You have to do this. And you've seen that with some of the like booking agencies for flights and for the accommodation, like, hey, we put — all the fees are included, you know. It's like going to Las Vegas, like, oh, they didn't tell you about the resort fee of $45 a day for the privilege to use the pool and have the internet.

You know, like, I think eventually you'll see people push back enough that, OK, we're gonna have to show — put all those fees together. But right now, people are like, hey, I just wanna travel and there's not a lot of other options out there, so you'll take what you can get. So I think we're gonna be in this nickel-and-diming thing for a while, to be honest.

[00:30:05]
Brian Mackey: Last thing on airlines and maybe our last question because we're low on time, but the FAA head this year said — maybe it was last year, recently said — he was gonna make a push to have people dress better on airlines. I wonder how you feel about that. [You're] somebody [who] takes a lot of international flights. Is there, you know, is there such a thing as too comfortable, or should we be wearing

[00:30:27]
Mark Wolters: three-piece

[00:30:28]
Brian Mackey: suits, or what do you,

[00:30:29]
Mark Wolters: you know, if you're a kid and you're in your pajamas, it's fine. If you're 35 in your pajamas, it might not go over well, especially if you fly international, because the customs people take it personally how you show up. Also, what you have to realize, like if you wear something that anybody could find offensive, you could be asked to get off the plane or change your clothes or turn your shirt inside out. If you think it's nothing offensive at all, it doesn't matter. They do not want any trouble on their flights and so therefore you might have to do that. So, and that could be if your stuff is too revealing, you know, or stuff that's, you know, inappropriate — you're like, oh, it's just a funny word. I'm like, yeah, but it's offensive in other languages. Like those things people get in trouble for. And when they say it like they want people to dress up, I'm like, look, nobody wears suits and ties anymore. So we're never going back to wearing a suit and tie on a plane. No matter how much Instagrammers want to tell you, we're gonna dress up like this and they'll give us first class. No, they're not gonna give you first class because you're dressing up in a suit and tie. OK?

But it is one of those things — it's kind of like the respect for the people that work in the airport and work in the airlines. Like that's one of those things. Like when we fly around, I'm not wearing a suit and tie, but I'm not walking around like a bum. You know, like, that's one of those things, and I don't know how they'd really enforce it except for having the rules like, you know, like almost like a school dress code kind of thing. But again, will that cause more issues, you know, with people? So that's one of the things — they can say they want people to dress better when they fly, but, you know. It's one of those things. It's a slippery slope.

[00:32:03]
Brian Mackey: Last question — shoes on or shoes off on the airplane?

[00:32:06]
Mark Wolters: I always have my shoes on and I will tell people like, if you take your shoes off, keep them right there and put your feet in them because a little turbulence, all of a sudden your shoes are gone and then you got to go to the bathroom and it's never water on the bathroom floor in the lavatory on the plane.

[00:32:21]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, even if you take your shoes off, you got to put them on for the bathroom. 100%.

[00:32:25]
Mark Wolters: Yeah, like that just — I keep mine on the whole flight. I have mine on on the flight.

[00:32:33]
Brian Mackey: All right, you can find Mark Wolters at Wolters's World on YouTube and elsewhere, and maybe you'll see him on his trip from Italy to Portugal this summer. Thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate your time. That's all the time we have for today. The 21st Show is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm Brian Mackey. Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.