Get up to 25% off Priority Pass annual lounge club membership

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• fivebobbill says:

  4 Sep4 September 08:34

  I have Priority Pass via Amex Platinum. I recall reading in here that some (or all) access to “non lounge” privileges have been removed, but that the Grain Store Gatwick was maybe an exception?
  I ask as I get the following message when I log into my PP account:
  * Important Notice
  “As of August 1. 2019 you can no longer access non-lounge airport experiences using this membership. You are still able to access over 1200 lounges.”
  Has anyone tried the Grain Store lately?

  • Barry says:

    4 Sep4 September 08:44

    The email I had from PP specifically stated that Grain Store was excluded from these new terms so you can still use it there.

    I used it at LGW a couple of weeks back and it was accepted for myself and a guest with no issues.

    • Shoestring says:

      4 Sep4 September 09:13

      https://headforpoints.com/2019/07/14/amex-plat-priority-pass-changes/

      [Gatwick’s The Grain Store is, literally, the only Priority Pass restaurant in the world which is still accessible to Amex-issued Priority Pass cardholders.

      I also don’t think this will last. The new Club Aspire lounge is due to open in Gatwick South in mid September – see the website here. Importantly, this lounge is 50% owned by the parent of Priority Pass. Once it is active, it makes no sense for Priority Pass to pay for The Grain Store when it can send people to the new Club Aspire lounge instead.]

• Andrew says:

  4 Sep4 September 08:41

  Also rather handily, if you have a BoS, HfX or Lloyds account then there is likely to be a 10% offer on your next IHG booking.

  In addition, I have a 12% offer for this week only on my NextJump scheme that layers.

  • The Original David says:

    4 Sep4 September 09:21

    I have a Club Lloyds account but have never noticed such offers… Where do I look?

    • The Original David says:

      4 Sep4 September 09:46

      Aha, found it! Left-hand side of online banking – “Everyday Offers”. Perhaps my Lloyds Avios credit card isn’t totally useless after all…

• Rob says:

  4 Sep4 September 09:15

  Ah, that offer still lives!

• joe bloggs says:

  4 Sep4 September 10:24

  Appears that for a couple, the standard membership might be the best one, as the one with 10 “free” only applies to the member, the guest always has to pay £20.

  Only if using an airport >5 times a year as a couple, in a class that doesn’t provide lounge access, does it make marginal sense to buy anthing but the most basic membership.

  5 airports = 10 visits.
  Standard membership will cost £51 plus £200 in fees = £251
  Standard+ membership costs £160 plus £100 in fees =£260

  And if circumstance change and you travel less, you’ve only invest £51 in the basic one, instead of £160.

  • Shoestring says:

    4 Sep4 September 10:50

    you’d be better off getting Gold Amex and once you’ve used up the 2 free Lounge Club passes, buy them @£20

    • Joe bloggs says:

      4 Sep4 September 15:27

      I already have the gold card. Thinking about giving it up before the renewal kicks in.

      The groupon method is the cheapest way of retaining the option to get into a lounge for £20 a go.

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Sep4 September 15:39

        fee free Barclays current a/c

        then pay £18/ month which gets you 6 Dragonpass lounge passes, that can be used for guests as well

        minimum 6 months then you can put the £18/ month on hold for 6 months & start again – ie £18/ lounge pass

        possibly worth it to some because you get good travel insurance & car breakdown cover as well
        https://www.barclays.co.uk/insurance/travel-insurance/travel-plus-pack/

        • Shoestring says:

          4 Sep4 September 15:50

          https://thetelegraph.dragonpassuk.com

          Gone up to £20 a go with code TELEDP16

          same as some other methods but very flexible & no need to have Amex Gold card for example

• stevenhp1987 says:

  4 Sep4 September 11:16

  O/T New Amex Supplementary card is receiving 0 offers while the main card has had ~ 30 since the supp was added.

  Spoke to live chat who were fairly useless. I understand it’s an additional perk but just seems odd to get 0… I’ve tried removing the sup and re-adding it to my account (on the same login as my main cards).

  • Rui N. says:

    4 Sep4 September 12:42

    How long have you had the supp card? I recently got an amex gold supp card and took 6 weeks to receive my first offer. After that, they’ve started coming at a normal pace compared to the main card.

  • meta says:

    4 Sep4 September 13:47

    That might be a problem. I have separate account for each main and supp. If you add too many cards on one account, Amex IT somehow blocks. I think two is the max before it gets blocked, but I’m not risking it any more and have separate ones!

    • S says:

      4 Sep4 September 19:17

      I have 6 cards on one online account, at one point it was 8. All offers are showing up fine.

      Definitely can’t be just 2.

      • meta says:

        4 Sep4 September 20:12

        You might be fine, but for some people it causes issues if they put more cards on one account. I’m not sure if it is two, three or more. But there is clearly an IT problem which Amex refuses to acknowledge and I wouldn’t risk it again.

• Lady London says:

  4 Sep4 September 11:22

  When I first bought the top end Priority Pass about 4 years ago I think the rack rate for it was £210-215.

  Then I think it went to around £230 the following year then £250 or so.

  At £305 I think I will not renew when mine expires. The numbers of my visits add up to make it look ok but I don’t use Heathrow much right now. Heathrow has Plaza Premium which I like. Lounges elsewhere in UK, Europe and the US often don’t add much value to what you can get in the terminal anyway at same or less ‘cost’ per visit. Some Priority Pass lounges are downright depressing.

  I suppose the increases in price have been to pay all the extra Amex 2* entries particularly external money PP has been paying out to restaurants. Australia has also been hit hard by the withdrawal of this. It made some airports a lot more tolerable as access to dining filled a gap left by lounges there too.

  If I do renew my PP again after its next expiry it wouldn’t be till I am heading for Asia due to quality issues in lounges. Also due to continuing worry that I will start being turned away at London airports where the lounge is tolerable. Or where the lounge isn’t that good but the airport is so much worse (LTN).

  However most of the lounges I like using are accessible with other memberships than PP or they are airline lounges. For this reason I am giving serious thought to planning my flights to achieve Star Alliance Gold. On the whole I have found Star Alliance lounges better than One world. And I’ll use Plaza Premium otherwise.

  But at these ripoff prices restaurants in any decent terminal are a strong contender as compared to Priority Pass. If restaurants are poor then generally a Priority Pass lounge will be too. Airline lounges in a poor terminal can sometimes be a haven of quality. But this is less often the case with Priority Pass as it seems Priority Pass may only have access to the poorer of the paid lounges in that terminal. I’m thinking IST (old Atatürk), DXB.

  Priority Pass has also emailed me a few times very recently offering me as a prestige cardholder 50% off the mid level pass if I buy it for someone. At the mid and lower levels as compared to other ways above I consider the Priority Pass a waste of money even at 50% off. Your sums are different if you get it as part of Amex. The Prestige level pass has just about been holding on on terms of value, but I now won’t be renewing it till I am heading to Asia or start flying out of LHR again.

  • Rob says:

    4 Sep4 September 11:55

    That’s a fair point. Airlines with great lounges also tend to have great restaurants, because the airport takes a hard line on quality everywhere (and the competition keeps both sides on their toes).

    • Lady London says:

      4 Sep4 September 14:21

      Maybe I’ve not tried enough restaurants in SIN but i would say this is an airport where you want to be in an airline lounge. Otherwise food and drink seems to be lower end. Without airline lounge (for everything if you’re right level) you have Plaza Premium for comfort, not really for food. So if Priority Pass ever lost Plaza Premium i doubt i would bother at all with it. Luckily Plaza Premium is accessible other ways however. Otherwise airport outlets are toward lower end it seems.

      Luckily, unlike airports like Luton, SIN main terminals are very tolerable if you are not lounged with open air areas, open air swimming pool etc.

      So SIN is a case at one end of the spectrum where airline lounges prob best option, Priority Pass can get you into a decent offering, and the main passenger areas are very tolerable as well. So conditions in the airport don’t force you into a lounge, and the lounge options are quality.

      Luton is towards the other end of the spectrum
      You have a massively cramped airport with huge passenger throughput per square foot of terminal area. There is 1 Priority Pass lounge, which is frequently full. Priority Pass members turned away in masses at many times not just when you’d think they would be busy, as are masses of others. They lock the door downstairs at the entrance before the stairs up to the lounge at those times as the lounge is so rammed it’s not even worth queuing.

      The airport has no airline lounges. The only thing that has made that single inadequate-capacity lounge plan to improve is the arrival of No.1 Clubrooms which had queues out the door in it’s first week No. 1 Clubrooms will cost a chunky supplement even if someone has a Priority Pass. And yet, the overcrowding in the main terminal still makes Priority Pass worth it as there’s no airline louanges and thé main terminal is horrible to spend any time in – for an offering that is better than most other Aspires but still not really a relaxing expérience.

      If there were better quality restaurants with decent seating and a bit less crowding in the terminal few people would pay for it and that’s the case with a lot of Priority Pass lounges I’ve been in. They are mostly borderline quality and OK if quiet and if you have some sort of access that means you would have low to zero marginal cost for the visit. Unless there were massive flight delays you’d have to be certified insane to pay rack rate for this level of quality.

      The “we’ll let you in if you reserve by paying £5 extra on top of your lounge pass” practice creeping in and the “No.1 Clubrooms will let you in with your pass, but there is a £15 supplement” is not looking good. This may be a direction the lounge providers are testing. Lounge access could evolve so that there is routinely an extra level of ‘taxes’ to access lounges dependent on quality or demand. Alex light silently allow this to creep in (it has already, with the reservation fee) because it would keep the lid on their costs.

      I have a different plan for my airport lounging other than contemplating *G for their louanges which are better, and the other ways I already have to access Plaza Premium, which I might share after my existing Priority Pass expires and I’ve had the chance to test it a bit.

      • Lady London says:

        4 Sep4 September 14:29

        “Alex above = Amex not protesting about the £5 ” reservation” fee and not renegotiating to reduce lounge turnaways because it keeps a lid on their costs.

      • Shoestring says:

        4 Sep4 September 14:34

        Why are you so against the £5 reservation fee? It guarantees your entrance to the lounge. Your PP cost is a sunk cost whereas the £5 is effectively your variable cost. If somebody said: pay just £5 and you can definitely get a lounge pass & secured entry, you’d jump at the chance, esp given what you say about the general public terminal at Luton.

        Hazarding a guess, I’d say you think £5 extra is just gounging/ a rip-off, after paying so much up front for the PP card. I simply don’t get that as realistically reflecting the whole picture. I’d weigh up that minor irritation/ trifling amount vs the thought that just £5 gets you food & drink, relaxation, good wifi, comfy seat, presumably fairly pleasant environment in most respects.

        • Lady London says:

          4 Sep4 September 15:14

          @Shoestring for very specific lounges where you know the offering is up to scratch yes I am absolutely prepared to pay £5 even though I do think it’s a ripoff.

          That would be No.1 at T3 LHR. Based on my experience last month there would be one other lounge at LGW I’d contemplate for this and it’s not No.1.

          However paid lounges with a quality feel are rare – airline lounges on the whole are a better bet. So the thing is I would seek another method of entry than PP as I probably won’t have PP by the time I will be flying out of T3 next towards end of this year.

          You being OK with the £5 is a rational choice as you describe @Shoestring. But it goes to my fear that lounge program fee increases may slow down – but lounges will start demanding co-pay everywhere. Just like taxes on British Airways tickets really. People paid for their Avios (lounge membership) but in future lounge programs may work so ‘taxes’ (supplements / reservation fees) have to be paid by the passenger as well.

      • Pangolin says:

        4 Sep4 September 15:38

        I totally agree with everything you say about PP in your first post but the use of SIN as an example is perhaps unfortunate, since it’s the one place where I would always choose a contract lounge (SATS, accessible w/ PP) over the home airline’s main lounge (Kris Gold, accessible for *G). The Silver Kris lounge is certainly better but you need a J class ticket to get in there (or be SQ PPS, which is a little bit like LH HON).

        I used to have PP via the Amex Plat – now I have *G status I rarely miss it, unless I’m taking a non Star-Alliance flight and therefore lose lounge access. The Star Alliance lounges are definitely better than the contract ones in general (with places like SIN being a notable exception).

        • AndyGWP says:

          4 Sep4 September 15:58

          Agreed – loved the Blossom / SATS lounge in T4 🙂

        • Lady London says:

          4 Sep4 September 19:51

          You are correct @Pangolin I am basing it on flying in J on so SQ higher level lounges to and from Oz on SQ. The only lounge I couldn’t get into was the one for PPS (there’s a specific one, or at least there was. The last 2 times I was travelling Y I was straight into the Plaza Premium lounge with massages booked. So you are probably right about the “status but not flying J or F” lounge.

          But isn’t SIN a really great airport that caters to longhaul travellers’ needs really well ?

    • Anna says:

      4 Sep4 September 17:40

      And that’s why T3 at MAN has a KFC…

• Travel Strong says:

  4 Sep4 September 12:33

  I struggle to see any way I would ever pay for a PP over an Amex Platinum.

  Amex Plat = £575
  Add 1 supp and achieve 2 referrals in a year, and that’s >£290 of miles value…
  And the card has all the benefits of the £305 PP
  (*plus* free guests *plus* more lounges e.g. centurion, Plaza Premium)

  £305 + £290 = £595 of value…. £20 more than the Amex fee.

  … and that’s without qualifying for any signup bonus, and without applying any value to the free guests, or any value to the other platinum benefits… Hilton breakfasts… Hertz discounts… Amex offers… etc.

• lee says:

  4 Sep4 September 14:41

  is There an issue With Miles and More website ?

  I keep getting error code when searching award availability.
  {“code”:400,”message”:”An error occurred servicing your request. “}

  • Lady London says:

    4 Sep4 September 15:17

    For some strange reason I usually found the Miles & More website often worked better if accessed via Lufthansa.co.uk or even Lufthansa.de.

    Clear cookies first if you’ve been having problems.

    • Pangolin says:

      4 Sep4 September 15:41

      That’s exactly what I do half the time. You can get access to all your info about miles, etc., by logging into the LH site.

      I also find that using my Lufthansa ID means I get fewer of those annoying occasions when it refuses to recognise my M&M credentials.

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