Is Airport Lounge Access Worth It? Here’s the Real Story

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The perk that many of the most expensive credit cards have in common is complimentary access to select airport lounges. Many of the best travel rewards cards include free membership with at least one lounge network, if not several.

While we call the memberships free, however, it’s more like they’re prepaid, since most cards with lounge access have annual fees upward of $450 a year. With airport lounges being a big selling point on many of these cards, it raises the question, what’s it really worth?

I know I’m as bad as everyone else for talking up the lounges, and I do stand by my opinions, but even I have to admit the true lounge experience isn’t always (or even often) glitz and glam.

Known problem: Busy times mean lounge waitlists

Right up front, we have to address the 747-sized elephant in the lounge — or, rather, should we say waiting to get into the lounge? Because they probably would be, you know, waiting, especially if they traveled during peak days and times.

A lot of people have fancy travel rewards cards now, and air travel is more popular now than even before the COVID-19 pandemic. So the lounges are often at capacity during the morning and evening rush hours. This leads to waitlists, which can be anywhere from five minutes to half an hour or more.

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I’ve yet to be hit with waitlists (I purposefully travel during the least busy times: early in the morning, in the middle of the week), but I have been in a lounge or two that was a bit skint on seating. This can make them less restful than you might like, though you can typically still get drinks and a meal.

Unspoken truth: Most lounges are mediocre

Even if you get into lounges without a wait, there is a fact we really need to face: Most lounges aren’t that fancy. Sure, the newer lounges (less than 10 years old) tend to be more spacious, with nicer (and newer) decor and seating.

Not all of the lounges are new. The older, smaller lounges can be cramped and feel rundown. International lounges tend to be a little nicer than domestic, but even there you’ll find the same issues with older lounges vs. new.

Oh, and the free food we all tout so much? If we’re being honest, we’d all admit that sometimes it’s a little sad — especially if you’re in a lounge with buffet-style service instead of made-to-order (which is most of them, in my experience).

Hard reality: Even a crap lounge is better than the gate

So, you’ve spent 15 minutes of your layover on the waitlist to get into the lounge just to find a glorified hotel breakfast and no seats next to the outlets. What do you do?

You eat your sous vide egg bites and sad melon in your seat with no power and be grateful you’re not paying $20 for a Starbucks coffee and a cold muffin you stood in line for 20 minutes to order. Because that’s what you’d be doing if you weren’t in the lounge, friends. (Ask me how I know.)

The saddest fact I have for you today is that no matter how bad the lounge experience gets, how long the wait lists are, or how terrible the food, it is still so much better than sitting in the travel equivalent of an open office for three hours, on a chair from the devil’s waiting room, listening to the dulcet tones of airline staff making boarding announcements.

Actual value: Whatever you’d pay for it in cash

How do you value your travel card’s airport lounge perk? For whatever you’d pay, in cash, for lounge access during a year (or some percentage of this, based on how often you travel to airports with lounges to which your card gives you access).

I’ll fully admit that I am spoiled (and privileged) to the point that if none of my credit cards can get me into a lounge for free, I will absolutely pay for a day pass if that’s an option. Since the typical day pass ranges from $50 to $75 a pop, I value the lounge access from my cards in the hundreds of dollars during high-travel years.

You may not feel as strongly about it as I do. Maybe you’re perfectly happy at the gate with a bag full of snacks, your noise-canceling headphones, and a dubstep playlist (dubstep never dies). In that case, you probably shouldn’t put much, if any, value on your card’s airport lounge access.

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