Qatar Airways – no lounge access on tickets booked through Amex Travel
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It was less than a platinum experience to be denied Qatar Airways lounge access after booking through Amex travel. Priority pass provided access to a plaza premium but I am not sure whether I should stop booking on Qatar airways or stop using Amex Travel. I have flown occasionally on Qatar mostly for short trips when the timings were convenient but they do specifically look for ways to annoy business class passengers.
You’ll have been booked on one of the cheap fare classes that excludes lounge access.
I can understand your frustration but this is one of the downsides of not booking direct as you can lose the granularity on what you are getting:
Amex travel tells you what code (ie QR…) it is booked under. If you book the same ticket under BA codeshare (BA6…), it is often the same price, but you get 1) lounge access even if cheapest business 2) full BA gold bonus on top 3) It counts towards your 4 flights a year.
It is how I ended up BA gold with a tonne of avios without ever actually flying on BA metal.Amex travel tells you what code (ie QR…) it is booked under. If you book the same ticket under BA codeshare (BA6…), it is often the same price, but you get 1) lounge access even if cheapest business 2) full BA gold bonus on top 3) It counts towards your 4 flights a year.
It is how I ended up BA gold with a tonne of avios without ever actually flying on BA metal.Exactly this. I had a Dxb-doh-lhr in October on what had to be a very inexpensive business fare (less than BA WT+), with ba flight numbers but QR metal. The first leg was booked into Y, so no lounge access, but no issues in doh with my ba flight number.
The above is all very well but few people will understand the vagaries of booking under a BA or QR flight number and fare classes etc.
In some ways it is to the advantage of people like “us” but it undoubtedly ends up alienating a bunch of people.
OP has my full sympathy!
Amex Travel is just an OTA like Expedia. In fact, they now use Expedia’s platform for bookings.
It’s a very old flaky travel agent trick to charge a traveller close enough to the market rate they could get elsewhere, maybe even not that much below the price that may be offered by the airline direct. But just low enough below the price of those for the ‘cheap tickets’ travel agent, now often an OTA, to get the business.
The traveller may try to change his ticket, or unexpectedly have to pay some luggage, or get normal benefits expected for that market price or type of ticket, such as lounge access, denied.
Some corporate travel agents themselves do it knowingly particularly with hotels (eg they take a room from a bedbank or consolidator that does not include breakfast, or they ticket an unchangeable IT ticket, but still charge nearly the going rate.
The margin on this is relatively huge to the travel agent as compared to normal margins and some of this may (or may not) be passed back to the employer.
An eminent name in travel may degrade over the years and indulge in one or other of these types of margin-increasing sourcing when their reputation was not built on that.
This is not the first time we hear of flight or hotel bookings from American Express travel being discovered by the traveller not to have reasonably expected flexibility or not to allow expected benefits for the class of travel or hotel. It’a not rife but over time it has come up a few times on here.
Interesting. I had booked an expensive 3 night hotel stay (£5k ish) with Amex travel but not fine hotels and resorts. After the cut-off date for cancellation, I discovered the rate both with Amex and booking directly had reduced by £1K. I contacted Amex and acknowledged that I was past the the cut off for free cancellation and asked what they could do, if indeed anything.
They then told me it was down to Expedia with whom until now I had no idea was involved in the booking. I contacted the hotel direct who told me that they would cancel the booking with Expedia (they had no knowledge that I had made an Amex booking) and would allow a new booking at a lower rate if I booked direct.
Amex to be fair to them, contacted a dedicated Amex team in Expedia, and cancelled the booking. I was surprised how helpful Amex was given that they had no obligation to cancel without cost. It appeared that Amex had a level of clout with Expedia that was beyond what a direct Expedia booking could achieve. Credit to Amex for flexible Customer service.
Interesting. I had booked an expensive 3 night hotel stay (£5k ish) with Amex travel but not fine hotels and resorts. After the cut-off date for cancellation, I discovered the rate both with Amex and booking directly had reduced by £1K. I contacted Amex and acknowledged that I was past the the cut off for free cancellation and asked what they could do, if indeed anything.
They then told me it was down to Expedia with whom until now I had no idea was involved in the booking. I contacted the hotel direct who told me that they would cancel the booking with Expedia (they had no knowledge that I had made an Amex booking) and would allow a new booking at a lower rate if I booked direct.
Amex to be fair to them, contacted a dedicated Amex team in Expedia, and cancelled the booking. I was surprised how helpful Amex was given that they had no obligation to cancel without cost. It appeared that Amex had a level of clout with Expedia that was beyond what a direct Expedia booking could achieve. Credit to Amex for flexible Customer service.
This caused me some grief at a Shangri La.
Booked a b&b rate through AmEx travel as the price looked remarkably good.
When checking in, the hotel had no knowledge of breakfast being included nor that Amex Travel were involved.
As far as they were concerned I’d booked on a room-only basis through Expedia.
Had to pay for breakfast and eventually managed to get it reimbursed by Amex CS after sending in a complaint which they took a couple of weeks to investigate.I now stay well clear of Amex travel services.
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