Is it worth paying a reservation fee for a lounge you have unlimited, free access to? That’s the question that Priority Pass cardmembers face when planning a visit to The Club airport lounges, and it’s a question that other crowded lounges might consider, too.
- Your Delta Sky Club membership gets you into those lounges… if you have enough time once you get to the front of the line.
Line for Delta Sky Club New York LaGuardia - Your Amex Platinum is supposed to get you into Centurion lounges, but those are so busy no one goes there anymore (and the food isn’t as good as it used to be, either).
American Express Centurion Lounge Las Vegas, Credit: TravelZork - Capital One introduced virtual queuing, copied by Amex. Add yourself to the waitlist via app based on how busy the lounge it – maybe when you head out to the airport, when you arrive curbside, or when you clear TSA.
Capital One Lounge, Washington Dulles - And the new Capital One Landing at Washington’s National airport accepts reservations – which are free for cardmembers. Pick your time and arrive within 15 minutes of that time to avoid queueing – however reservations are limited and do fill up.
Capital One Landing, Washington National
Capital One Landing Tapas
It seems like $9 to skip the line could be worth it, depending on how long the line is, how crowded the lounge is once you get inside, and what services are offered.
I find that Capital One lounges do a good job managing crowding. They have queues to get in, but once inside you’re going to be able to find a seat and there’s not really a line to speak of at the bar.
Capital One Lounge Bar, Washington Dulles
Still, I’d love to see a premium option – maybe a trump card once a year cardmembers can play that says “this visit is the one time it’s really important to me to have entry priority.” Or maybe cardmembers who spend a certain amount on the card get priority like Amex offers complimentary guests at $75,000 spend? Or ‘redeem 2,500 points to skip the queue’? It’s a bit anti-democratic, but the whole idea of a premium airport lounge is as well.
The Club lounges are a bit different. They aren’t as nice so as to be worth it, and they’ll be busy once you get inside. Should you pay to reserve?
- You can generally reserve a specific entry time at least a day in advance through their app
- You pay $9 for the reservation. This doesn’t include access, if you do not already gain access such as from a Priority Pass card.
The Club at CHS
On the one hand, pre-booking eliminates unpredictable wait times, and $9 seems low enough to be worthwhile. On the other hand, you’re not getting much once inside and there goes the concept of complimentary lounge access once it’s no longer complimentary. Still, if you’re going to pay for overpriced snacks and drinks in the terminal without lounge access, $9 seems pretty cheap by comparison once you do have the ‘complimentary’ lounge access.
Clearly there’s demand for this because at airports like San Francisco and Chicago Midway, The Club reservation slots can sell out quickly. You might skip a 45-minute wait, but on the other hand you don’t know for certain there’ll be a wait especially at non-peak times and then you’re just lighting your $9 on fire.
The Club at MSY
I’ve read a couple of reports online about J.P. Morgan Reserve cardmembers being able to skip the lines at Chase Sapphire lounges. I do not have direct knowledge of this and would love to know if any readers do. It seems like a pretty terrible experience for a Chase customer who ostensibly has at least $10 million in assets under management with the bank to get turned away from their airport lounge (or wait in line, for that matter). Of course there are legacy cardmembers from when any old Chase Private Client customer could get a card (and a period of a few days in 2016 when the application was available online, in error).
Chase Sapphire Lounge, Washington Dulles
Chase Sapphire Lounge, Washington Dulles
Ultimately, premium cards promise free, exclusive access but can’t deliver. The benefit is used to sell cards and it works. There are too many people with the cards that offer access to deliver a consistent, quality experience in a limited amount of space. I think the Chase lounges are great, and I enjoy Capital One lounges (and have always been able to manage getting into those, either by reservation or virtual queue or walkup) I just wish there was a premium option. Yet I’m somewhat non-plussed by the premium reservation option with The Club, and it feels like a cash grab, because the product isn’t as good. $9 is about what I’d pay, though!
And it’s better than what United co-brand cardmembers endure trying to use their two annual club visit passes – signs at the door saying they aren’t being accepted due to crowding. There’s no advance notice of this, nor any buy out – just a message that the cardmember with the pass isn’t welcome.
When American Express first opened Centurion lounges, the food was fantastic and lounges weren’t overrun. Not everyone had discovered them yet. There weren’t as many cardmembers. Those managing the budgets hadn’t quite anticipated that when you open a nice lounge, more people will show up, stay longer, and eat more. They were producing food at a smaller scale and with what seemed like a bigger budget per head.
Back then there were no limits on how far in advance you could arrive at a Centurion lounge, and no lines to get in.
Credit card premium lounges are a victim of their own success, attracting more customers (which detracts from the experience) and driving up costs (which lead to cutbacks in the experience). I’d love to see premium cards offer an annual skip the line pass. Charging feels gauche. At the same time I’d pay. It’s just that if I pay to skip the line at a The Club I’ll feel pretty cheated. What do you think?
Insanity. Paying for something that you’ve already paid for makes no sense. And these lounges becoming little more than a mob scene, like the AA lounge in Philadelphia or the Delta lounge in LaGuardia, makes this even crazier. Count me out …
EdSparks58
$9 is too low. Double the annual fees on amex and chase sapphire cards and separate the casual travelers from the true road warriors. As Warren Buffet likes to say, only when the tide goes out, do you see who’s not wearing a bathing suit.
For upset AMEX platinum card holders waiting one hour or more to enter an American Express Centurion lounge, the AMEX staff offers this solution. If you were worthy to receive an invitation for the black AMEX Centurion card you should seriously consider paying the $10,000 initiation fee plus the annual fee for the immediate skip the line privileges with two complimentary guest admittance, a reserved table and more unique benefits.
@ Gary — This will be great reason to cancel more credit cards. I mean, at what point are we just being suckers to pay twice for something? There is a terminal with a free water fountain, a free place to sit, free wi-fi, and a free toilet. What else does one actually NEED in an airport?
The Club Lounges are the absolute worst, so there is no way in hell I would pay $1 to cut the line.
I’m just looking forward to when everyone is bled so dry by all these tactics that a critical mass of consumers have ‘nothing left to lose’—once that happens, there is finally hope that companies will have to be competitive again, and maybe, just maybe, then, loyalty will matter once again. ‘We had it all, didn’t we?’
Will an entry fee also apply to dogs? They eat food and sometimes take seats.
@jns — Don’t hate the pets; blame the owners.
Most “The Club” lounges aren’t worth $9 to enter alone. As for AMEX, the requirements for approval for the Platinum Card are:
1. Anyone with a pulse -and-
2. Anyone with $695 -and-
3. 600+ credit score.
This is why the ghetto has overrun these lounges.
@CHRIS — Could you be more specific by which ‘group(s)’ of people you mean by the ‘ghetto’—like, are you hating on those from the 1930s, or the ‘inner city’? Just saying, please do be more specific with your animus, if you must use such pejoratives on here.
Hard pass.
It’s not even a question of money but just a principal. So I’m going to reward an agency for over selling their product and not providing enough of that product, while wasting the time of the clients by making them lineup.
The correct move would have been to increase the infrastructure so that people don’t have to lineup.
Of course it is a money grab or they wouldn’t do it.
Once they get people conditioned to paying the fee, it will soon rise.
Gary: This statement doesn’t make any sense: “Your Amex Platinum is supposed to get you into Centurion lounges, but those are so busy no one goes there anymore.” If nobody goes to AMEX lounges anymore, then why are they so busy. Maybe you should clarify that you don’t go anymore, but “you” doesn’t equal “nobody.”
$9 isn’t worth the pain it causes everyone else. I think the the issue is the heavy users:
1. $700 fee get you in 3-5 times a year, no guests. After that $100 per entry/guest
2 $1500 unlimited entry no guest
3 $5k-$10k skip the line, bring a guest.
@Daniel M…It appears you’re not aware of Yogi Berra. Gary is paraphrasing him.
“No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.”
Starting to sound like disney. You pay for ticket, but then pay additional fee to get in front of the line. When everyone is on the same boat, everyone is back to square 1, yet everyone paid more.
You’re looking at this from the wrong direction. I paid the $9 in Miami- I was one of approx 25,000 people getting off a cruise ship at Port of Miami at the same time and headed to the airport at the same time plus all those at Ft Lauderdale. $9 insured I had a reasonably quiet place to grab a coffee and work. You ever seen the Miami terminals after the ships dock???
“maybe a trump card once a year”
Such a card would have to be the best. Ever. And always be first.
On a more serious note, your headline brings up two possibilities: 1) Set a new standard 2) Money grab. The problem is that this would be combining the worst aspects of both, setting up a perpetually escalating cash grab to skip the line, much like the similar skip the line pass at Universal Studios Orlando. Have you seen the truly jaw dropping charges they get you on if you want a skip the line ticket that will let you ride the Hogwarts Express? Last people I knew that did it paid something like $400 each for one day. Likewise a pretty mild $9 p.p. charge can easily balloon into $24, then $47, then $79… all for access you’ve already paid for. Like Hyatt introducing category 8 level for a very very few select hotels the theory is fine but the reality will turn out to be increasingly awful.
Skip the line is only worth it if you are going to arrive to a lounge that isn’t completely packed. Since that is obviously not going to be the case, it’s not worth it.
Business class lounges should be for business class. It’s a big part of the monetization of Premium cabins, something that US Airlines have yet to figure out.
@Mike P — There you go again, quotin’ folks. Who else you got? Educate us, professor!
Or you can just go straight to the gate and sit for free