American Express has made the decision to close the spas in centurion lounges due to overcrowding and these will be replaced with additional seating. These spas were located in Dallas Fort Worth (DFW), Los Angeles (LAX), and Miami (MIA) and have already been closed as of 10/3/24. American Express has tried to put other measures in place to reduce lounge overcrowding, day passes were eliminated for non premium cardholders & guests were limited to two (previously immediate family members were also allowed), then guests were removed.
Hat tip to TPG
Never got to use one of these unfortunately. Hard to use without a long layover early in the day anyway.
Guess what I am going back to AA lounge these days. It’s less crowded and they have warm food now as well. Not as good but doable. And of course Chase lounge when I can but they starting to get busy now, too.
the food has gotten better in the AA Lounges for sure. They need to increase staffing at the bar tho. The ORD club has 1 instead of formerly 3 bar tenders during the busy times. It’s a shit show.
Can’t they just make the whole airport a lounge???
My home base is MIA. I gave up the Amex card after owning it for over 10 years – I couldnt stand waiting for 30-60 minutes on standby and then circling back when the lounge was no longer at capacity.
I opened the AA card and have been much happier with the availability.
funny just wrote a similar comment and then saw yours. Also Mia here and NYC often
Anyone know if they are keeping the spas outs the USA?
This is reducing benefits and cost under the guise of controlling overcrowding. If overcrowding is an issue they wanted to address they would increase the size of these lounges. But that would not be good for profits.
Lolz. You realize that airports control how much space you are allocated, right? I’d make a large wager that if they could have had a larger space (such as what they were given in ATL) they would have sprung for it. The expansion of the Centurion lounges at SEA and SFO are perfect examples of how they were able to convince the airport to finally give them more space.
I disagree with this take. It is a decrease in benefits. I think the net cost to Amex will actually be more due to the increased food/drink consumption. They probably will need to keep the same number of staff, but they might be able to pay them slightly less than a masseuse. We are talking about airports where they just can’t “make the lounge bigger”
They’re filled to the brim, the spas are completely unnecessary.
Lounge access via credit cards is largely dead (maybe with the exception of AA). They’re all full or with never-ending lines now.
That’s not my experience. Yes they are always busy but at least 90% of the time I can get in and eat, and have somewhat better atmosphere
A few months ago at the LAX lounge I tried to ask about the spa which ended up being a massage place and was told I’d have to book and wait. Guess a lot of people needed their balls massaged or whatever. I just ate the food and left.
The nice thing about the LAX lounge is they have a quiet, dim-lit room for you to sleep in. I haven’t seen that in the other Amex lounges I’ve been to so far.
The skyclub lounge was much better, specifically in terminal 3.
Overcrowding will always be a problem no matter what until Amex only allows one person inside the lounge at any given time with a time limit.
Nope. Overcrowding will always be a problem as long as they do everything they can to sell you a credit card with lounge access advertised and pushed as a main focus and people keep paying the fees while they keep raising the annual cost. They don’t give a shit about crowding… they could easily just control time limits and numbers of people in a lounge at any time without reducing benefits and raising the fees. The bullshit about overcrowding is just that… bullshit.
Every move to “reduce overcrowding” has all been 100 percent to increase card application and uptake and profit. Ohhhh lounges are too full… so less guests… unless you pay for the extra authorized user cards. Oh the lounge is too full… so no more guests, not even a spouse… unless you spend more on your card then the median annual household income or get a second pointless fucking $700 a year card for your household. Oh, the lounge is too full, so no costly spa benefit that doesn’t yield more people paying for the card. Oh, lounge is too full so higher annual fee… etc etc etc etc. Every single move is only to funnel MORE people into having cards and more people to spend insane amounts on the card. The reason overcrowding has not improved at any point despite the imbeciles who cheered moves like eliminating bringing even one guest is because they don’t want to fix or even care about crowds.