France vs. Poland, AI vs. Travel Advisors, and Scott Kirby’s $32M Lecture

TravelTube.com Podcast with Mark Murphy

Hey folks, it's Mark Murphy, back with TravelTube.com. I've been gone for a few weeks, but we've been featuring a lot of travel advisors and travel influencers on TravelTube, and you've been seeing that in our newsletter. Just a reminder: please sign up for our newsletter. Go to the site, click subscribe, and put in your basic information. We send one newsletter a week. We don't sell your email, and we don't do anything with it other than tell you what we're doing on TravelTube.com.

So support those who support you, travel advisors, because I don't think there's a bigger supporter of travel advisors out there than me, going back decades. Who else goes on national TV and says your best travel app is a human app, and it's called a travel agent? That was me.

I don't do it as much as I used to when I owned the Travel Alliance Media business: TravelPulse.com, Agent at Home Magazine, Vacation Agent Magazine, TravelAgentAcademy.com, Virtual Travel Events, AgentStudio.com, and on and on. That was the business I built and ultimately sold to Northstar Travel Media, which owns it now. Those brands are still out there. Some of them, unfortunately, they didn't know what to do with. They weren't the same kind of company we were. We were a software-driven company; they're a media company. But they're still putting out content, and God bless them, they're doing a great job.

What I like to do now is bring video to bear to showcase travel advisors and people who are out there traveling the world, and bring that content to you in a single place. That's what TravelTube.com does.

With that said, I do my podcast, typically weekly. As you can see, I'm back in my studio here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which is awesome. I wouldn't want to be anyplace else. And I'll keep doing this as long as I can count on the support of advisors out there to share this content and follow us on social media and anywhere else we post.

Excuse me for a second, I've got a little something in my eye. The studio is a little dusty. We had the cleaners come in to make it look good. Doesn't it look great? If you're not watching on video, that's okay. But it's a great studio, and I love being back in Florida.

This week I'm going to get into a number of things. I was going to do an entire podcast on AI and travel, but I think I can cut that down, because of what's going on in Europe and the contrast we see between certain European countries and others, and the impact that's going to have on travel. You've all seen what's going on, in particular in France. I'm going to cover it from a travel angle and compare and contrast France with Poland: what's different, and where would I go today, and why?

Then I'm going to get into AI and how it's going to impact travel, and whether it's going to take over from travel advisors and make them extinct. Will they become extinct? We'll get into it.

And then, virtue signaling at its finest: Scott Kirby of United Airlines. I'm going to cover the last six years with Scott Kirby. Man, I feel bad for the shareholders there. I think this guy's a clown, and when I get into it, you'll understand why.

All right, let's get into it.

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EUROPE, FRANCE AND POLAND

First up, everyone's seeing what's going on in Europe. It's everywhere. Fires in the street. And let me just say, there are some people out there, and you probably know who they are, who are in a bubble. Some of them don't even know what's going on. Or they think they know because they're listening to certain mainstream media outlets, and they think it's just a bunch of students who are upset because the classrooms aren't great, France doesn't invest enough in social services and education and all these other things, and that's why they're burning down schools and town halls that have stood for 180-plus years.

That's not what's happening, folks. What's happening, in particular in France, is a country that has had an open-door policy to bring people in from the third world who don't share their values and don't want to assimilate. That's why in places like Paris you have what are called no-go zones. Even the police won't go into some of these Muslim neighborhoods. Yeah, I said it: Muslim neighborhoods. That's the root of the problem going on in France right now, and anybody who says it isn't is freaking lying. That's just a fact. But you can't say it, because you'll be called an Islamophobe, or you'll be called racist. Well, last time I checked, you can't be called racist for pushing back on someone's religion. Religion isn't a race. So that's number one.

Number two, you can see it in the attacks that have taken place in Europe for decades from Muslim extremists, which are getting even crazier now because they've infiltrated so many of these countries. I believe the Muslim population in France right now is around 10%. So as far as I'm concerned, in 20 years France will be an Islamic country. You can go back and look at places like Iran. Look at Iran in the '70s, look at the pictures and how people lived and what life was like back then, and then look at what it's like today. You can do that all around the world. You don't need me to tell you; you can see it for yourself.

The thing I don't understand, or, well, I do, but let's say right now I don't, is all of these people flooding into Western countries from Muslim countries. If they're having a problem, if they're refugees, why aren't they going to other Muslim countries? Why would they go to France? It's very liberal. A lot of the things they do in France are very offensive to people who follow the Muslim faith. So why are they going there? Why don't they go to the closest Muslim country that shares their values and their religion and practices Sharia law?

Well, depending on where they're coming from, many of those countries don't want those refugees. Those Muslim countries don't want those Muslim refugees. Take Gaza, for instance. Egypt doesn't want to take them. Jordan doesn't want to take them. Saudi Arabia doesn't want to take them. Ask yourself why. Why don't they want to take in their Muslim brothers? Maybe they feel it might disrupt their own country. And you've had people in those countries who won't accept these so-called refugees, and they'll tell you straight up that's the reason. They don't want them.

Yet France has opened the doors, let them flood in, and given them all these social services. It's as close to socialism as you can get without going full-blown socialist. This is what the left wants, and this is what these people supposedly want. But here they are, rioting.

So what does that mean when it comes to travel? You're thinking about going to Europe. Are you going to fly into Charles de Gaulle next week and hang out in Paris, on the Champs-Élysées? Well, they were rioting there. What the hell are the stores? The Hermès store, the Louis Vuitton store, all of them. They're breaking in, setting fires, stealing stuff. And who are these people? "They're just upset students." No, they're freaking criminals.

It's interesting. I posted on Twitter that there are videos of these immigrants, whether they're legal or illegal, mostly illegal, flashing guns in France like little gang boys. And I said it's interesting that illegal aliens or immigrants can have weapons when the populace can't get them legally. And people came back with, "No, you can get guns in France," this and that. This is what I don't understand about people on the left. You can't get a gun for self-protection in France. It takes about 30 seconds: go to any search engine and ask, "Can you legally carry a gun as a citizen in France?" The answer comes back no. You can't carry a concealed gun in France as a citizen for self-defense.

If you've gone through all the steps to get a weapon and you want to travel somewhere with it, it has to be unloaded. No magazine in it, no bullets in the magazine, nothing in the chamber, and it's got to be locked away, only so you can get from point A to point B. So if you follow the law, you can't carry it. And if you do it illegally, if you're a citizen who brings that weapon out, you're facing up to seven years in prison.

Yet I've got these jackasses on Twitter saying, "No, they can get guns, it's legal to have a gun." Read the details, you effing morons. I'm going to try to keep it clean. You can't. It literally spells it out: it's against the law to have a gun for self-defense and carry it.

So what good is a gun if it's locked in a safe in your home? The only time you can use it is if someone's breaking into your house. And even if you do use it, the question becomes: are you going to be charged with a crime for shooting an intruder? Say an intruder comes in with a hammer, breaking into your place, and you shoot them. How many times have we heard, "Why didn't you shoot them in the arm? Why didn't you shoot them in the leg?" And this actually happens in some states in this country. You know the states: blue states, where if somebody breaks into your house and you shoot them dead, you can go to jail for murder. People have been charged with murder for killing somebody during a home invasion, and part of the excuse is, "Well, you could have run out the back door."

Thank God I live in Florida. In Florida, they encourage us to own guns and to have really good aim in case we're attacked and have to defend ourselves. The police will tell you that, which is why I love Florida. If you're a criminal and you want to break into a house in Florida, there's a really good chance those people are armed. And I'm not talking about one gun. I'm talking four, five, six, seven guns: shotguns, AR-15s, pistols with 17 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, and it's going to be lights out. That'll be the last home invasion you ever do.

I prefer the criminal to be afraid to break in, as opposed to the homeowner or the person on the street being afraid of the criminal. The criminal doesn't care about the law. They're breaking into your house. They don't care about your safety; they're there to do you harm. And what we're seeing in France is store owners trying to defend their stores. They don't have weapons. They can't do anything. All of a sudden they're overrun and their livelihood is destroyed.

So what does this mean for travel? It means people are going to cancel travel to countries that are experiencing these kinds of issues. Unless this gets handled very quickly, and I don't expect it to, it's going to keep going on and keep popping up. So even if you're planning a trip for next summer, I'd say take France off your list. Don't bother. I've been there many times. Beautiful sights, everything. The things that haven't burned down still look great.

I would go to Poland. People say, "Poland?" And I say yes, because one of the best places I've ever traveled is Poland. What did I love about it? It was incredibly safe. It had history, World War II history. It had the camps; you could go and experience that and understand what evil really is. You could go down into a salt mine, and there's a cathedral inside it. The ceiling is maybe 50 or 60 feet high, maybe higher, I don't know. It's a huge ceiling carved out of the salt, with chandeliers. Unbelievable, spectacular. You ride the elevator all the way down and experience that. I only got a taste, because I was only there for about five days, and that was about 10 years ago. But I absolutely loved it.

So why is Poland at the top of my list right now, in particular with what's going on in France and Belgium and Italy, et cetera? What I love about Poland is their immigration policy. They won't allow these immigrants to come in from these Muslim countries. And the interesting thing about Poland is that they have a lot of Muslims who already live there, but they've assimilated. They've adopted Polish culture. They want to live among the Poles, and they've been living like that for decades.

But then you have this other group that wants to come in. And you could say 90% of them are great. Say 100,000 come in, and 90% of them are really good, solid people. I don't doubt that. But if 10% of them are radicalized, that's 10,000 people coming in who could potentially do you harm. So Poland said absolutely not. They've gone against the EU. Same with Hungary, another great country I'd recommend. They make sure their people are safe, and that means you're safe as a tourist. It means in Kraków you can walk the plaza at midnight and not have to worry about whether you're going to end up dead or mugged or anything in between.

So to me it's very simple. Countries that protect their borders, that are stringent about immigration, that want to maintain their culture, are the ones that are going to do exceptionally well going forward in travel and tourism.

And again, I'd recommend Poland because I think it's an undiscovered gem for most people who've traveled to Europe. Most have never gone there. It's typically the UK, which is a mess with the invasion taking place there. People always want to go to France. Then it's a matter of whether they want to go up to the Netherlands, or visit Italy. But really, for American tourists, I think the top three are Italy, France and the UK, probably in that order. I may be wrong, but let's face it, those are the top three. Those are the places most Americans go when they think about traveling to Europe.

Now, I've said some things on here because I see what's happening. I don't follow the mainstream media other than to fact-check it, and when I look at it and hear the commentary, I know they're lying to you. There are a lot of sources out there. Find trusted sources that can tell you what's really going on in these places.

I'll wrap up on Europe, and on Paris in particular, with this. My nephew, who lives in Amsterdam, is in Paris right now. We asked him what's going on, what he's seeing over there. He said, "I'm good, but there are some areas of the city that are really, really dangerous and really bad." And we're talking about mainstream tourist destinations. He has to be there for work. But when you have the option of not going there, of not having to worry about leaving your hotel and whether you turn right or left, let me tell you: just skip it. Skip it, until they can get their shit together in France.

Macron is blaming Trump for this. He's saying the reason they're rioting is that gas prices went up and people are upset, that it's an economic problem. No, you dipshit. It's a problem of an open border and people who won't assimilate. It's as simple as that.

And I'm tired of the grievance. I don't care. You've got a lot of Muslim countries; go to your own Muslim countries. Remigrate these people out. That's what I would do if I were the leader of France. But because of colonialism, anybody from the places France had territories can come right in, and you get what you colonize, folks. You get these third-world folks who don't follow your values, who don't want to be in a Western culture, and who want to change your culture. And they're going to do it because they're outbreeding you. They're having seven, eight, nine, ten kids, and couples in France are having fewer than two. So your population is shrinking and theirs is growing. As soon as they have enough critical mass, they'll elect people who will change your laws, and you'll become an Islamic state. That's the way it is.

If you're French and you're okay with that, I think you're an idiot. But for the people who don't want that, I feel bad for you. I actually do, because nobody wants to lose their country. And I think you're already past the point of no return.

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AI AND TRAVEL

All right. With that said, I want to shift gears and cover AI and travel.

I can't tell you how many times since 1991, when I got into the B2B media space covering the travel industry, and travel agents and travel advisors in particular, I've been told that travel agents are going out of business and are going to be dead.

Let's go back to February 1994. Travel agencies made about 80% of their revenue booking airline tickets, because you needed a physical ticket. Unless you went to a city ticket office, you got it through a travel agent, and agents were paid on average 10% by the airlines to provide that service. Then the airlines, because it's an oligopoly (today four airlines control about 80% of domestic airline traffic), said, "Screw you, travel agents." It started with Delta. They said no matter the price of the ticket, the most commission you'll ever get is 50 bucks. So if you sold a $3,000 first-class ticket that you'd have gotten at least $300 on, now you're down to $50. That's roughly an 83% commission cut. Delta did it, other airlines followed, and eventually they went to zero commission.

So travel agents had to shift gears. And as they were shifting gears, focusing more on leisure travel or adding fees to book an airline ticket, the internet started to take off. I remember, I think it was summer of '94, a guy who worked for Hilton Hotels, and I won't mention his name to protect him, told me, "You'd better find another job." At that point I was basically running a magazine called Travel Agent Magazine. He said, "Travel agents are going to be out of business in the next two to three years." And I was like, "Okay, whatever, bro." That was in Lisbon at the ASTA Congress, which had probably 5,000 people at the time, a monster conference compared to what they get today.

The internet has been around since the '90s, and ironically, travel agents haven't gone anywhere. They shifted their focus to leisure travel. Then they shifted to becoming more home-based, which dramatically lowers your costs, because you don't really need a storefront to sell travel when a lot of it is done online. Just like you buy stuff through Amazon, you can talk to your travel advisor, get great information, and they share a suggested itinerary for a potential trip. And as a consumer, if you want, you can very easily fact-check their pricing.

Companies like Travefy came along with great tools for travel advisors to build and share itineraries and stay in touch with their clients every step of the trip. Products like that came out because of the internet. The internet created tools travel agents could use to better serve clients. It cut down the time they had to spend on that kind of work, made them look much more professional, and really supported their business. Over the years the internet has been a boon to the travel agent marketplace, not a hindrance, despite people telling us that Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity were all going to put you out of business. I've never been a travel agent. I was a media guy, a magazine publisher at the time. And I was saying, it's a tool. It's a tool.

So what does that mean for AI and travel? Think about how you use AI as a consumer. You can build a lot of agents and bots with AI to do certain tasks, but the average person isn't doing that. That's more of a business application: somebody calls in and an AI answers the phone, sends out an email, responds to an email, et cetera. There are all these tools you can use as a business owner. And it's growing fast. Things change rapidly; this will be outdated in three or four months. But I don't think the principle changes.

Right now you do a search on Google and you get the Gemini results. That's their AI. Instead of you having to comb through all the search results like you did a couple of years ago, it gives you a great summary, links you to some of the key findings if you want to drill into them, and brings back a concise summary related to the question you asked.

For instance, when I asked Grok whether it's legal for French citizens to own and carry guns for self-protection, it came right back in about 20 seconds and said no, you can't own a gun and carry it for personal protection in France. It went through all the steps you need just to get a gun, but it flat out said absolutely not; for the average citizen it takes a massive exception to be able to get and carry a gun. And I have people who can't take 20 seconds to figure that out. If you just did a normal search, you'd figure it out even faster. The result would come back in 0.02 seconds, and you could click a link and see exactly what I just said. Or you could use Grok and get a summary, which is even easier; it just takes a few seconds longer.

With that said, I see AI as an enabling tool for travel agents. I see agents using it, building out various prompts and tools with AI. And if you're a travel agent or advisor and you're not all over these tools, your competition is going to leave you behind, because they'll be able to expand their market, handle more clients, and respond more quickly, more professionally and in much greater numbers than you can if you stay where you are right now.

I have ADHD. I didn't get diagnosed until I was 50. I remember telling a college girlfriend I hadn't seen in about 35 years, "You're never going to believe it, I got diagnosed with ADHD." One of the things they asked during the diagnosis was what I was like back then. Well, I played basketball. I was a hyper kid, always out playing hoops, running around, a bit of a class clown, not a great student, very little attention span. I knew that, but they wanted to hear from people around me. At the time I think she was an assistant principal in Connecticut, and she said, "We didn't call it that then, but let me tell you, if you were in my school today, we'd have you medicated, bro. We'd absolutely have you medicated." I had to laugh. I said, "Wow, was I that crazy?" She said, "Absolutely. You were all over the place."

I bring that up because I had four jobs before I got into travel media. I'd be somewhere for three or four months, maybe six, and I'd be bored because it wasn't exciting. It was rinse and repeat. "All right, I've got that, what else can I do?" And there was nothing else I could do there, so I'd say, "I'm out." Then I started in this business and realized it never stops changing. It's changing rapidly, constantly. So I've never been bored.

And that's what I love about AI and travel right now. It's going to change the landscape, and those who are on board are going to ride the next wave. And there'll be another wave after that. I don't know what it is. Am I going to bring my Optimus robot with me on my next trip? Probably not. Where would I plug it in? But you get the idea. Things are changing rapidly, so get on board.

If you're a travel advisor, make sure you understand the tools out there that you can take advantage of, and find people in a networking group who are passionate about travel and passionate about AI and maybe a little further ahead than you are. They can lead you to the water. Because the one thing I'll say about this industry is that the travel advisors I know are always willing to help others, because a rising tide lifts all boats. If we can get more and more people on board and raise the professionalism, as opposed to the Fora agents and the other clowns out there that are basically consumer travel clubs, everyone will benefit.

I don't think there's anything else to say about AI and travel.

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SCOTT KIRBY AND UNITED AIRLINES

So now I'm going to shift to my buddy, my boy (being sarcastic), Scott Kirby of United Airlines.

Let me go back. I was very passionate about stopping lockdowns and all the other shit that went on with COVID. I was all over it. A lot of people got turned off because they were scared. I wasn't. I had no comorbidities, and I knew within the first two months that the average person dying was 80 and had four comorbidities: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, and down the line. If that were me, I'd be scared. But at the time, what was this, about six years ago, I was healthy, on no medication, in shape. It was like the flu to me. If I got it, I'd be fine. Rest a few days and I'd be back on my feet. And guess what? I got it in 2021. I was dragging for a day and a half, and by the second or third day I was back to myself.

As for mandating that experimental vaccine, which was never tested except on the folks who took it, I wasn't interested. But Scott Kirby at United Airlines was very forceful about mandating that every single United employee get the clot shot if they wanted to keep their job. And that's what it is. It's called the clot shot. You can call it whatever you want. I had no interest.

I looked at people like this guy, who in one sentence will talk about inclusivity. "Travel's got to be inclusive." And there are a lot of you idiots in travel who talk like this: it's about inclusiveness, inclusiveness. But then you got scared because the flu came around in a different form, inclusivity went out the window, and we saw who you really are. And unfortunately you screwed the industry. You screwed travel agents most of all, who were unable to earn an income for a long period because of all the craziness.

And if, God forbid, I wanted to take a cruise or go to certain destinations, I had to get vaccinated. You couldn't square that with the fact that we had an open border with millions of people coming in. Fifteen thousand people a day in some cases, hundreds of thousands a month, coming into our country with no vaccine required, nothing required. Yet if you wanted to fly into the U.S. on vacation, you had to get the clot shot. But if you came across the Rio Grande illegally, no problem, no vaccine, no worries. "By the way, now that you're here, where do you want to go? New York? Here's your ticket. You could probably use a phone, right? And here's a little cash on a debit card so you can take care of yourself. And when you get to New York, they'll put you up in a hotel for six months, twelve months, two years, and feed you." Are you effing kidding me? And you couldn't see this, Scott Kirby?

So you forced healthy people to take it. Think about your pilots. If you're a pilot under 40, you get a full-blown physical every 12 months. Over 40, it's every six months. These are about the healthiest people you'll find, because they've been cleared individually by doctors doing EKGs and all sorts of other tests every six months. And you forced them to take an experimental vaccine. And what happened? Some of your pilots got myocarditis. Some had other adverse effects. Some literally couldn't fly anymore, because they have to pass that physical every six months. Others said, "I'm not taking this experimental crap."

That was me. I'm not taking that shit. I was lucky; I'd sold my company, so I didn't have to take anything. And I'd also had COVID, this thing called natural immunity, which most people got, but they still forced people to get vaccinated. So in the middle of a pilot shortage that had been going on for decades, United lost pilots, either because they resigned and said "screw this," or because of adverse events. That made the pilot shortage even worse.

Then the next brilliant move by Scott Kirby was talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, and how he wanted 50% of the pilots they hire to be women or people of color. That's a common thing on the left now. And I'm saying to myself: if you're flying on an airplane, do you give a damn about the genitalia or the ethnicity of the pilot? I never did. All I cared about was whether they were competent. If you try to hit a quota and there aren't enough of those people to meet it based on merit, what do you have to do? You have to lower your standards to bring more of them in and hit your 50% mark. That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard, especially when you've got 150 to 300 or 400 souls on board that you're responsible for. You're going to hire somebody based on their skin color or their genitalia? Yeah, that's Scott Kirby.

But it doesn't stop there, folks. Just recently Scott Kirby went on, I think it was Fox Business, and was virtue signaling about income inequality, how it's a big problem in this country, blah, blah, blah. Guess how much Scott Kirby made in 2025? He made $32 million. Thirty-two million dollars. And he's lecturing the audience of Fox Business, and I'm sure he talks about it in a lot of other places too; that's just where we saw the interview. The guy who made $32 million in one year is talking about income inequality.

So Scott, let me know when you're going to redistribute. You can keep a million dollars. That's enough, right? How much do you really need, Scott? Isn't that what the left says about people like you? How much do you actually need? Well, we know it's never about you. It's always about others, and virtue signaling. So your virtue signaling fell on ears that realize you're full of shit. You made $32 million.

It's just like those entertainers who go on about stolen land. Billie Eilish: "We're here accepting this award on stolen land." And climate change, climate change. We've got to protect the environment, everybody should ride bikes. And then she gets in an SUV to leave the event, goes to the FBO, gets on a private jet, and flies to her mansion, on stolen land. All these people can just shut the F up. Scott Kirby, you can shut the F up. You're a clown, an overpaid clown.

If the shareholders want to give you $32 million a year, great. That's up to them. That's why I'll never own United Airlines stock. I'll never own any airline stock. But to sit there and talk about income inequality when you earn $32 million, I want to know why you haven't given $31 million of it away. Why didn't you redistribute it to your lower-paid employees at United? Why didn't you give it to a charity? Why didn't you go build a bunch of wells and schools in third-world countries? Why didn't you do any of those things, Scott Kirby? Because you're full of shit. You're a virtue signaler. That's all you are, like so many of you on the left.

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CLOSE

And that's why I voted today. Yes, I got out, and I got my little sticker, if you're watching on video. Yep, I voted. America 250. I definitely voted. Boom. And I'm wearing my XX XY shirt. I wore it to the polling place. I won't tell you who I voted for or how I voted, but I think you know.

With that said, I hope you have a great day and a great week, and I'll see you next week. We'll have some good stuff to cover. There's some stuff I couldn't get to today that's actually pretty funny, and I like funny stuff.

Until next time, I'm Mark Murphy, TravelTube.com. Please follow us on your favorite social media and on the podcast apps, and of course, sign up for our newsletter on the site. Take care.