Category Archives for Food.
I do not read hotel and restaurant reviews abroad the same way everywhere. In Europe, bad reviews can be easier for businesses to challenge or remove, so I rely less on average ratings and more on patterns, photos, trusted local sites, and avoiding obvious tourist traps.
Airline and hotel dining programs look like separate loyalty products, but most of them are really just different labels on the same underlying business. For decades, one company lineage — from Transmedia to iDine to Rewards Network — has powered nearly all of them, using the same basic model to bring in diners, buy points from loyalty programs, and delier guests to restaurants through rebates.
A viral restaurant owner rant lays out what makes DoorDash so frustrating: restaurants lose margin, drivers create headaches, customers pay more, and the food often arrives worse than it left the kitchen. Yet even with all of that, delivery apps keep winning because they offer reach, convenience, and incremental orders that many restaurants feel they cannot walk away from.
American Airlines says it’s making a premium push, but a recent menu at the Austin Admirals Club tells a very different story—featuring “Sicilian” brisket in the heart of Texas and “angry pasta” that made me mad. It’s a small detail that captures a much bigger problem with how the airline thinks about product and culture.
Most travelers don’t seek out McDonald’s abroad for the food. The real value is that it’s a predictable place to stop, walk in unnoticed, and use a clean restroom—something you can’t always count on in parts of Asia, Africa, or even busy tourist districts. Menus change country to country, but the bathrooms are consistent, free, and easy to find, which makes McDonald’s a more useful travel tool than a meal plan.
CAVA is taking a page from airlines — launching a loyalty program that status matches you straight to its top tier. Even Marriott Silver and Spirit elites qualify in this surprisingly generous fast-casual move.
Bilt Rewards has opened a cafe on the ground floor of their headquarters. It offers really good coffee and pastries. But this is more of a to go place, there’s no space for lounging, and they don’t have staff to talk to you about their program or credit card. So I’m not sure what the value proposition is?
Customers no longer buy tickets just on schedule, price, and perceived reliability. Airline seats are no longer just commodity products.
Several spots that did make the list are overrated. It seems like they’re stretching because once they agreed to rate Austin they needed to rate restaurants in Austin and while the city’s food scene is across-the-board above average there’s actually very little that’s great. Some of the spots that made the list wouldn’t have come close in other cities that the guide rates.
Here’s what well-informed experts say, what they get wrong, and the tools you should really be using.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
