Tag Archives for restaurants.
American Express is assembling its travel and lifestyle super app. Cardmembers spend a lot on restaurants, and those with the disposable income to go out at upper-end restaurants are a lucrative segment.
Meanwhile, embedding a card brand into the dining ecosystem, and leveraging a platform to deliver restaurant reservations and experiences to guests, is a way to win loyalty. At least that’s the bet.
Chase is making changes to its Priority Pass cards, eliminating part of the benefit. Starting in July cardmembers will no longer receive credits at airport restaurants that are part of the program.
Bobby Van’s is one of the better airport restaurants in the Priority Pass program. While you’re supposed to have a same day boarding pass to enter, that still lets you eat there both on arrival in New York and on departure as well.
In my experience they don’t actually check boarding passes, just swipe your card. If I were an American Airlines crewmember based in New York I’d definitely get a credit card that offers unlimited Priority Pass visits (not from American Express, which doesn’t cover restaurant visits).
Capital One is partnering with Chef José Andrés, the MICHELIN Guide and the James Beard Foundation on a new dining portal that combines curated restaurant recommendations and tables set aside for Capital One rewards cardmembers.
As the weather has turned colder in much of the country this presents a challenge. It’s no longer viable for many restaurants to attract diners to an outdoor setting. So some restaurants have turned to offering meals inside private hotel suites. Hotels are frequently empty, so there’s an easy unused resource to leverage and private rooms provide guests the comfort and safety of outdoors, without being subject to the elements.
Back in June Thai Airways, unable to transport many passengers, pivoted into the prepared meals space offering food pre-orders for pickup at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang airports. Now they’ve taken their culinary aspirations and grown that into a new airport cafe.
The new restaurant just opened yesterday, and is decorated with real airplane seats, model airplanes, and “even an airstair at the entrance that would (probably) make you miss boarding their iconic purple planes.”
My gut feeling is that there’s something wrong with complaining when others are suffering so much, though people are suffering all around the world during ‘normal times’ and I don’t have an issue talking about ‘first world problems’. Does this shift during COVID times make me, on some level, a hypocrite?
How are you handling customer service complaints now, and is that different than it was at the start of the year? And if there’s a change, will it last past the coronavirus pandemic?
A year ago Capital One launched a relationship with dining reservations site Resy, setting aside tables at great restaurants for cardmembers. American Express went and acquired Resy and now American Express has a much weaker Resy partnership. Capital One quickly went out and partnered with OpenTable.
Yet somehow I didn’t even realize that before these things happened – a full 19 months ago – Chase launched a partnership with restaurant booking site Tock, which sells tickets to restaurants (top end restaurants with limited seating charge you in advance for pre fixe meals through the site).
AirAsia wants to create Santan Restaurant and T&CO Cafe as a franchise with 100 outlets within 3-5 years, even expanding to New York. They see a market for an Asian version of American fast food chains. U.S. chains succeed even though they aren’t inherently great and charge more than local equivalents.
A model of bad food and high prices isn’t a great starting place except at airports and tourist spots, but that’s usually driven by high rents and a need to meet highly diverse tastes – people aren’t there for the food.
Did you ever think that your airline meal was so good you wished you had it at home? In 2014 Air Food One attempted home delivery of LSG Sky Chefs meals. They were delivering leftover airline food throughout Germany. That effort didn’t make it.
Now there’s a new attempt – a real restaurant that serves an airline’s meals on the ground.
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 »
