This always seemed obvious to me until I listened to an episode of the Risky Business podcast and they seemed to be wholly against using VPNs in such a situation because modern wifi security is typically enough / there's no reason to fear public wifi anymore. Going so far as to call VPNs a scam in this context. I still never trusted public wifi for much of anything, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking those guys know more than me. I'm glad I still used my VPN with a kill switch despite their advice. Now I'm seriously considering a travel router.