Priority Pass increasing its airport lounge guest fees from 1st October

Whilst you should have been emailed directly by Priority Pass about this yesterday, the airport lounge club group is increasing its guest fee from £20 to £24 from 1st October.

If you currently pay for a Priority Pass directly from the company, you may want to rethink in light of this and swap to a credit card version instead.

If you get the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold credit card, you receive four free Priority Pass visits each year. These can be used entirely by yourself or for yourself and guests travelling with you.

Given the new £24 rate, you are covering £96 of the £160 annual fee for Amex Gold via this benefit. Even better, Amex Gold is free for the first year.

For heavy Priority Pass users, The Platinum Card from American Express comes with TWO Priority Pass cards (one for you, one for your supplementary cardholder) each of which offers UNLIMITED free access for the holder and a guest. This means that a family of four can access a lounge for free, something that would usually cost £96 if you had a ‘pay as you go’ Priority Pass.

Amex Platinum also comes with a huge range of other benefits – see our review here – which can make the £575 annual fee look like good value. This includes £300 of annual dining credit, £100 of annual Harvey Nichols credit and 30,000 bonus Membership Rewards points in year 1.

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How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (September 2023)

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 Plaza Premium, Delta Air Lines and Eurostar lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

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

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.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free LoungeKey card, allowing you access to the LoungeKey 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.

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