Tag Archives for american express.
American Express still sees headroom to charge customers more, and make them feel o.k. with it by selling access to their cardmembers to adjacent brands in exchange for coupons and discounts. That strategy will work until they reach some theoretical limit – but they haven’t found it yet. As long as they keep promising you a somewhat better experience in aspirational portions of your life like travel, you will keep paying and keep spending on their cards.
The highlight of the lounge – and some people love it, others hate it, my view was a bit more in the middle – is the food. They have actual beef, not something I’ve seen much of in Centurion lounges the past several years as the food budget appears to have been cut back.
American Express is launching a new lounge concept, in airports where they already have Centurion lounges. It will be branded “Sidecar by Centurion Lounge.”
I had been to the old Seattle American Express Centurion lounge several times, but hadn’t been to the new expanded one since it opened two years ago. Located in the airport’s Central Terminal mezzanine above the food court, they went from having just 4,500 square feet to about 14,000 square feet – a legitimately large lounge.
The Philadelphia airport has arguably the worst American Express Centurion lounge. It’s small. The food isn’t very good or attractively presented. There’s nothing relaxing about the space.
Emirates is only marginally useful as a transfer partner. Their awards are expensive and they impose draconian fuel surcharges as well. You can also transfer to Qantas and redeem saver inventory at similar or better pricing in many cases.
I’d take the Capital One lounge over this one in a heartbeat. The coffee here is going to be better than in the Chase lounge or Delta Sky Club. It’s decent as far as airport lounges go but I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek it out or spend extra time here.
Delta and American Express are working on a new premium credit card, positioned as higher-end than their current premium Delta Reserve card that comes with lounge access.
Chase has an ad campaign out that a refresh of their Sapphire Reserve product is coming, and that they will be introducing a business version of the card. Not to be left behind in the media buzz, American Express put out a release saying they, too, will refresh their personal and business Platinum cards “later this year.”
Everything was wrapped up by March 24, ending four stressful weeks at the mercy of two mega-corporations and an inability to sort through errors.
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 »
