News and notes from around the interweb:

• One take on United Airlines premium passenger food spend, from the Freakonomics interview with Chief Commercial Officer of Gate Gourmet

  Gategourmet, and other large airline catering companies like it, have multi-year contracts in place with the big carriers, like Delta, United, and Virgin Atlantic. They put in bids for the right to produce food for certain routes — say, San Francisco to New York, or Chicago to Boston. The terms of these contracts are secret, but we do know that airlines spend a considerable amount of money on food. United Airlines, for example, has an annual food budget of around $2 billion dollars to serve some 60 million meals to its premium passengers. That works out to around $33 bucks per meal. Kinsella says that every airline’s budget is different. But most of them tend to be hyper-vigilant about the cost of their food.

  [Gate Group CCO Chris] KINSELLA: The airline business, it’s very cyclical. The airlines have to have a tight hand on their costs and the money that they’re able to spend with food and beverage. Lemons and limes on an aircraft, olives in a salad, tomatoes in a salad. We are literally counting pennies with the airline on some of these items because, when you’re catering airlines at the size and scale that Gategourmet does, it’s massive. So any change in pennies can yield thousands of dollars of savings.

  Can this make sense, though? Two months ago United reported 69,000 daily premium seats flown which would be 25.2 million annual premium seats including domestic first class and premium economy. Sure, long haul business class might get two meals but those breakfasts aren’t $33.

  Now, when you add up the main meal (maybe $15 tops), pre-arrival meal ($5-7), midflight snacks ($2 at most) and alcohol and soft drinks ($8-12 but perhaps United’s recent upgrade in wine boosted this slightly) you do get to the $33-ish figure cited per long haul business passenger. But the 60 million premium cabin meals doesn’t quite math.

  

• The CEO of Rove shares (and note that the ‘VFTW’ code does not get me anything):

  Hotel price matching with Expedia/the hotel directly is implemented across a majority of our inventory. Previously we were trying to predict this (and sometimes were more expensive other times less), now you get the same rate you would’ve paid + up to 25x miles (and often more).

  The VFTW code for 10k bonus miles on your first stay of $500+ will last through at least July 4th, and now it will give you 20k miles if the stay is $1,500+. You can only qualify for one of the two bonuses.

  Also added more stores and categories on the shopping portal (people have really liked the 3x on gift cards including Visa/MC).

  He previously explained earning their transferable points booking hotels:

  You can get up to 25x miles at a bunch of hotels without needing a card, while the next best giving a flexible currency is 10x requiring a high [annual fee].

  That, combined with the fact that you get the miles instantly when the stay is nonrefundable, means you can often cover your flight for free with your hotel stay. …[A] customer..did this and got 3 free biz class tickets on [Turkish] for 255k miles within 2 weeks of our launch (for about $10k hotel spend). The flights he received were likely worth more than he spent on the hotel. The amount you’d have to spend with any other program to get that is much much higher.

• I will never feel guilty for my behavior as a hotel guest again. To wit: (HT: TProphet)

  The receptionist went upstairs and a guest was sitting in the hallway cutting his toenails. WTF? It was a house guest, so he had a room, who does something like that? She asked him to please stop doing that, he went to his room and housekeeping vacuumed the hallway.

  An hour later, the same guest comes downstairs and goes to the breakfast buffet. What does a normal guest do? He takes a plate or a bowl. No, not this guest. He grabbed cheese, sausage, tomato slices and placed the food on his forearm. Of course half of it fell on the floor. After the dubious toenail story in the hallway, none of the service or reception ladies dared to speak to him. So the breakfast cook (a huge bear) was asked to address the guest. So he went to him and asked him to take a plate. The guest looked at him without saying a word. And let out a fart that was probably heard 10 meters away at the reception.

• Reasonable and balanced take on the United flight attendant contract from a United pilot who says in the end he’d vote no. I think he does a nice job weighing the pros and cons of the deal, and explaining his own subjective conclusion, in a way that others might well look at and come to their own opposite conclusion.

  Put a different way, the negotiating committee prioritized things that wouldn’t be as important to him, but that might be super important to other crew. I’d add that there’s going to be one set of work rules and economic terms for everybody in a union deal, whereas every flight attendant has their own different subjective priorities. You then have to think, if you vote no because the tradeoffs don’t represent your priorities, would a subsequent deal do a better or worse job of that?

• Motel 6 stiffed spokesman Tom Bodett for $1.2 million

  Tom Bodett, known for his radio and TV ads telling travelers that at Motel 6 “we’ll leave the light on for you,” has sued the motel chain for using his name and voice without permission, after their nearly four-decade relationship broke down.

  In a complaint filed Monday night in Manhattan federal court, Bodett said he cut ties with Motel 6 after its new owner, India-based OYO, missed a $1.2 million annual payment due on Jan. 7 under their contract, which was to end in November.

  Bodett said Motel 6 nonetheless kept using his name and voice on its national reservation phone line, violating his rights under the contract and federal trademark law.

• Oh, wait – pick me, pick me! I know the answer to this question!

  Hi @AmericanAir this is my seat arm rest on flight 2377 out of San Antonio. Is this acceptable?? pic.twitter.com/lP0kBi20ve

  — Hill Country HAC (@H_A_C) June 11, 2025

• South Korean government rejects Korean Air plan to devalue Asiana miles as part of combining frequent flyer programs from the merger. Ironically Asiana miles are worth more than Korean Air miles, not the other way around.