Name: Why It's Becoming Harder To Get Into Airport Lounges
Uploaded: 2023-10-21T17:04:20.000Z
Duration: 10 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Airport lounges are popping up everywhere, and almost every major airline and credit card company seems to

want to get in on it. You build in an airport.

They're spending millions of dollars to attract customers and keep them spending.

Customers reward companies that take care of them, and we feel really strongly that the lounges are a big

part of that for us. If you pay up and you're willing to commit to that airline over the long term and make

it like a partner basically for your travel experience, and they're willing to reward you with with

better perks. More than half of frequent travelers surveyed visit a lounge at some point during their

journeys. But as their popularity increases, so do the challenges of operating them, like

overcrowding. After scavenging the grounds, I finally found a table.

Once again, it is Hunger Games, true Hunger Games to get into a lounge and actually find a seat.

I would say any wait is too long and we are doing everything we can to minimize that.

As companies invest more money and effort into improving travel, loyalty status and lounge access are

becoming increasingly harder to qualify for a.

There are over 3200 airport lounges worldwide.

The United States has more than 300 of them, with individual airports in New York, Los Angeles and San

And there's a lot of ways you can qualify to get into them.

First and business class tickets will typically come with lounge access for most international travel, but

airlines like American, United and Delta restrict lounge entry for most domestic flights.

Many major airlines also have branded credit cards that allow you to earn frequent flier miles from everyday

You get to earn elite status when you reach certain spending thresholds.

Status at an airline comes with a host of benefits like free seat upgrades, free checked bags, premium

customer service, and, of course, lounge access.

Modern lounges often include amenities like an open bar, unlimited food, spa, gym, and even local art

installations. Boston specifically, we have a tap room, right?

Which really kind of leans into the Boston Beer culture, but with a sapphire twist.

Chase Capital One and American Express also have their own lines of premium travel credit cards that are not

These cards earn points and miles that can then be transferred to a number of different airlines.

Chase and Capital One are both in the early stages of creating a lounge network of their own.

Capital one launched its first in 2021, in Dallas, and Chase opened its first US lounge in Boston in May of

2023. Chase has announced the creation of five more lounges continues to be the number one

reason why a lot of our customers get and keep the card, so it was a natural extension for us to move

into creating our own proprietary lounge network.

Lounge investment and lower annual fees are keeping these cards competitive in the travel space to rival

the American Express Platinum, which offers access to its signature Centurion Lounge system.

And while these premium travel credit cards aren't cheap, they offer travel credit kickbacks of up to

$300. The first Centurion Lounge was created in Las Vegas in 2013, and since then

American Express has added over 20 locations worldwide.

The company currently operates 13 of them in the United States, with more on the way.

20% of overall foot volume on airlines are business travel or high frequency travelers and whatnot, and the

other 80% are people that travel maybe only once a year.

And so you don't necessarily have a loyalty to an airline at that point, but you may have loyalty to a

credit card. Premium tickets for those in business class are becoming more readily available, and

customers appear more willing to pay for the additional space.

For example, from 2009 to 2019, the share of premium Delta tickets sold rose

dramatically. United expects to increase its number of premium seats by 75% by

2026. Overall, the average airline ticket price has also steadily decreased over the past 25

years. Adjusting for inflation, domestic flights averaged over $575 in

1995. Today, the average trip costs $382.

Historically, the difference between first class and economy was some eye popping number.

Today, it's much more reasonable and it's, you know, the minute you try it, the more likely you're going to

As lounges become more accessible, overcrowding can become a problem.

We are adding 2700 seats this year, so that is every action we're

taking. That's what we're taking it for so that our customers won't have to wait.

Delta told CNBC that it is not considering a reservation system for access to its lounges.

Reservation is a complicated system at the end, because you're arriving from a flight or

you taking a Uber from the city 15 20 minutes late.

Do I give it away? It works in in the restaurant scene when you have a table assigned to you, this is a little

American Express allows its Centurion Lounge guests to check in via a mobile app, but access is still not

guaranteed. Capital one is currently experimenting with a digital waitlist system.

We are testing in our app now, and I would think of the digital waitlist less like a reservation

and more like the ability to kind of join a list ahead of time so that your place in line is secured and less

In 1940, American Airlines introduced the first lounge for customers at the New York Municipal Terminal, now

There were no membership dues, but you had to be invited.

The clubs became so coveted that in 1967, American Airlines opened its doors to anyone that would pay its

That would be equivalent to just over $2,000, accounting for inflation in 2023.

The 1960s saw the expansion of airport lounges across carriers.

The Trans World Airlines sunk in lounge still exists today in the TWA hotel, with themed cocktails and

American Airlines AAdvantage program was launched in 1981 and just like its first private lounge, membership

started out by invitation only for the airline's most frequent travelers.

United and Delta both launched loyalty programs that same year.

Loyalty. Grams arose after the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and removed government controls

The intent was to allow market forces to determine the prices going forward.

The rise of loyalty programs fueled the transformation of airlines, going from upscale waiting areas to

immersive luxury experiences by the 1980s.

As we've seen, kind of the volume of guests who are interested in having access to a lounge, as that's

grown, we've worked to continue to add new locations and expand the locations.

We have to make sure that we can accommodate those guests.

As more people traveled, lounges became more in demand and more accessible.

In 2002, almost 613 million passengers flew out of US airports.

In 2022, that number was more than 850 million.

Lounge experiences in the past have typically been designed more around business travelers,

and today people are traveling very differently than they did, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

They're traveling more with family and friends and in groups and, you know, blending business and leisure

travel, airlines and credit card companies spend millions to secure space in an airport.

But these lounges aren't making them much money, at least not directly.

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Why It's Becoming Harder To Get Into Airport Lounges

pandemic

access

guarantee

basically