American Express in Spain is adding a cap to the amount of times you can use Priority Pass lounges. Starting October 24, 2024 primary cardholders will get 20 visits per year for free and supplementary cardholders will get 10 visits per year. Additional visits are available at ~€30 per year.
Lounge overcrowding has been an issue for most operators, but given that American Express doesn’t operate these lounges I suspect this is far more about cutting costs than anything else. The amount and quality of lounges in Europe is much larger and there aren’t Centurion lounges either so I suspect we won’t see these caps extended anytime soon but American Express has in the past tested changes like this in smaller markets first.
Hat tip to Loyalty Lobby
I love the clubs. Well, by that I mean – I love them in that they keep the plebian low class people contained like cattle into a pig-pen.
Thus I can freely go to any of the restaurants, sit casually at the bar or have a table to myself knowing that it won’t be overcrowded with loud ignorant assholes that are trying to charge their 37 devices all over while scrounging for subpar eats.
Enjoy!
First time getting to use my card this year. But every lounge don’t except PP after 6:00pm
I’m from Spain but I live in the U.S. The PP lounges in Madrid are excellent. In fact I like them better over the Iberia lounges because the food is superior. Aesthetically Iberia lounges are nicer. Also, with PP you can access quite a few nice airline lounges all over Europe like the Aspire lounges in Amsterdam compared to the US where most of the PP lounges are very shitty
Requiescat in pace. Oh wait wrong country.
Priority pass needs to be nuked across the board. If it was only on the flagship travel cards for each bank it’d probably be better. As it stands now you get 4 visits free with US Bank’s priority pass.
Having access to an airline-operated lounge on virtually every itinerary, I’ve needed Priority Pass a grand total of once in the past few years. Yet, my wife and I have multiple cards that each provide Priority Pass. I would rather cards eliminate the benefit, lower their annual fees, and I’ll pay per visit if I ever need a Priority Pass lounge.
I’m all for card perks but as it stands right now the Priority Pass (at least for me) is absolutely worthless. If you are in any moderately busy airport, the clubs will be full and you’ll not be allowed entry – that has been my experience. I agree with
Not Sam that the best way to fix this is to allow a certain number of “person” visits per year. If you enter the club with 1 other person, that counts as 2 visits. As long as you allow people to bring guests with no impact, nothing is going to change.
Another thing that contributes to the worthlessness of Priority Pass is that by and large contracted lounges have other primary members (such as SkyTeam, Star Alliance, One World, etc). So, Priority Pass members are subject to limited hours and of course capacity limitations. That’s why I’m thinking that now paying extra for a card that has a Priority Pass membership is just throwing money away. If you travel at busy airports more likely than not, you’re going to be refused entry. If you value lounge access better to spend that money for something that will guarantee entry. I’m not a happy camper when I’m exhausted and doing an international connection and can’t enter a club to unwind a bit before the next flight. At this point, I believe the Priority Pass benefit is a scam. I had the Chase Sapphire Reserve for 4 years and the last 3 I couldn’t use it to enter a lounge. I was pissed. I now have downgraded to the Preferred and have the Venture X – but next year I’m going to just get the Venture. Why pay for something that isn’t available to use.
I have probably used PP more in Spain than any other country, so this is not terribly surprising. And while a fair number of readers here likely have multiple PP cards, I doubt that is as common in Spain.
Nerf after Nerf across the board while raising AFs
I’ve been saying this for a long time. Limiting free lounge visits and eliminating “guest loopholes” like the Venture X has will better solve the problems. 4-5 visits on low-end cards and maybe 10-20 on higher-end ones. People will only use their visits when it makes sense instead of “I have it so I may as well use it”. You also don’t get people with 10 guests. Another strategy is letting guest visits count against your total for the year like USbank. You’ll think twice before hauling your friend group or family along.
I can see them doing this in the US to weed out the minority that are heavy users. But sunce there are so few PP lounges in the US, I doubt most people would even come close to hitting 20 visits a year