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Priority Pass guest fee for American Express Platinum cardholders rising to £20

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Priority Pass has confirmed that the guest fee for anyone who has a card via American Express Platinum is rising to £20 from 1st October.

This is not a surprise as Priority Pass has already told its own members of a similar rise as we covered here.

Priority Pass

This is unlikely to have a major impact for American Express Platinum cardholders.  You can already get FOUR people for free into any of the 1,200 Priority Pass airport lounges worldwide.  The main cardholder is allowed to bring a guest and the Platinum supplementary cardholder, who gets their own Priority Pass, can also bring a free guest. Nothing changes here.

The strategy for a family of four is to give your partner the free Platinum supplementary card, allowing you to each guest in one child if you are all travelling together.

It seems that Priority Pass is not increasing the credit you get when eating at one of its airport restaurant partners, such as The Grain Store in Gatwick South.  This will remain at £15, which means that you should pay cash if taking an extra person rather than charging a guest to your Priority Pass account.  This rather confusing comment (given that the actual answer is ‘No’!) has appeared on the Priority Pass Q&A page:

“With the lounge visit fee increasing, does this mean the equivalent value of credit available at Priority Pass’ airport partners (cafes and restaurants) will increase accordingly?

Where Members pay for their visit or guest visits, these particular offers may not represent best value. We advise Members to visit our app or website to review full conditions of access before visiting.”

There is no word yet about changes to the Lounge Club card issued with American Express Preferred Rewards Gold.

Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2024)

Here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum instead.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Category

American Express Platinum card

Comments (100)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • DaveA says:
    31 Aug31 August 08:27

    OT – When you complete your 8th stay on a Hilton Status Match, do you get any notification that you have completed the required stays and are now confirmed as diamond until 2020? I can’t find any way to check that all of my stays have qualified and that I’m now “Officially” a diamond. (A couple of my stays were on rewards, which should be fine, but I’d like to confirm)

    Thanks

    • paulm says:
      31 Aug31 August 08:30

      Yes you should (at least I did last year) get an email confirming.

      • DaveA says:
        31 Aug31 August 16:32

        Thanks paulm – Will keep an eye out for an email then.

      • Stevie G says:
        31 Aug31 August 18:16

        You get an email entitled ‘A message from Hilton’s Global Head of Hilton Honors’…. couple of weeks after you qualifying stay.

  • jane says:
    31 Aug31 August 08:40

    Thanks all, will call amex re the nectar issue. no idea why it won’t work. I also tried Amazon but it would only let me use 42/44 for some reason so would have still been left with 2!

  • sam says:
    31 Aug31 August 08:52

    OT. can you use a BA 241 first leg on the day it expires or is it the day before? thank you

  • Matt says:
    31 Aug31 August 09:00

    I’ve used some of my Iberia 90K avios to book a hotel room that I now need to cancel. I can’t see any way of doing it online. I’ve phoned up and (after many long holds) was told that on top of having to pay £25 to get my avios back (fair enough, it’s in the t+cs) I would also have to pay £15 service fee for cancelling over the phone. The agent was unable to correctly explain how to cancel online – does anyone know how?

    • Genghis says:
      31 Aug31 August 09:51

      I thought the hotel bookings were non-refundable?

      • Matt says:
        31 Aug31 August 11:17

        Some are refundable with a £25 charge up until a day or two before the date of arrival. It’s 12K Avios, so I think it’s worth paying to get them back, but I’m not keen to pay £40.

  • Kevin says:
    31 Aug31 August 09:13

    If you have a subscription to the Telegraph (please don’t judge me – I subscribe to several newspapers), you can buy DragonPass e-certifivates for £18 each. These last for a year and so are very flexible as I think they can be used in any of the lounges.

    Worked well before we got Priority Pass/ Lounge Key.

  • The gg says:
    31 Aug31 August 09:49

    OT: Should I have expected my 11 August statement Amex SPG points to show in my SPG account by now or is everyone’s still being delayed? It contains my welcome bonus so no idea whether they will get it right. Thx

    • Lee says:
      31 Aug31 August 09:56

      +1 10 August statement still waiting

      • roberto says:
        31 Aug31 August 10:02

        Phoned yesterday and was told I will get them “mid September”…. They did confirm my new merged account details and are aware its an issue for many.

        • Lee says:
          31 Aug31 August 10:19

          Thanks roberto for the update, hopefully I will have points for both months by mid Sep

    • mike says:
      31 Aug31 August 11:32

      dont forget to get your compensation, mine posted the next day

      • DaveL says:
        31 Aug31 August 11:42

        Hi Mike – is this related to losing 20,000 points on the sign-up bonus? I’m currently in that situation with Amex not willing to resolve. They’re pushing me to SPG

    • DaveL says:
      31 Aug31 August 11:45

      My bonus has just hit, and I have been given 11,000 ‘starpoints’. Amex are telling me their conversion to new ‘points’ was a ‘one time thing’ on the 1st August and that I now need to pursue with SPG once the points have transferred. In other words, I have lost 22,000 on the signup bonus, and they are telling me they have no control, and SPG ‘may’ be able to help, but they ‘don’t know what their policies are’.

      Anyone else had to deal with this?

  • Chris says:
    31 Aug31 August 10:21

    OT: Got 5k Hilton points, any idea what I can use them for before they expire please?! TIA

    • ankomonkey says:
      31 Aug31 August 10:40

      Redemption in Turkey – there are a few 5k hotels there still.

    • John says:
      31 Aug31 August 12:48

      You can use them for roughly £15 to £20 off any Hilton that has standard awards available; could be more (even £60) if it’s a property with the old capped category rate and selling outrageous paid rates e.g. Hampton Liverpool airport Saturday night wants £129 but you can get it for 10000 points or 5000 points+£73

  • Roger1* says:
    31 Aug31 August 10:38

    OT: RED by Dufry

    Rob has previously mentioned RED by Dufry and the opportunity of benefits such as discounts at airport ‘duty free’ shops. I downloaded to my mobile and iPad. The app showed my membership card, silver status IIRC.

    Now,trying to log in, I get zilch, just a blank space. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing but with no result except the blank space.

    Is RED still a runner? Thanks.

    • Liz says:
      31 Aug31 August 11:15

      Same with me ! Tried to log in the other day to see if Iceland was included but just get white space!

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