Swedish Diners Club Creditcard - worth it [for lounge access]?
 

Hello! I hope to get some help from you experienced travellers here :)

I'm thinking of getting a creditcard from Diners Club in Sweden.
Most likely because the lounge access you get, the creditcard is quite cheap if you ask me, ~ 75$/year.

I've been looking around a little bit and for example a Priority pass costs 99$, then you have to pay for every visit, correct?

Isn't it better to get a Diners Club card instead?
Does it work with the card just to get lounge access while you travel? I'm not thinking of using it as a creditcard.. just to get access to lounges.

What do you say?
I hope I can get some help from you!

Regards

Diners Club Card
 

Hi HPS
I think that the Diners Club card offers great value for money for lounge access as my silver/gold status on several programmes has now expired as I'm not flying much these days (or just on routes served by budget airlines)
Check out dinersclubinternational.com for the range of lounges that you can access to determine if it's worth it-it seems that it's Gothenberg & Stockholm that you can access in Sweden-depends on where you're flying to but in the last 12 months Diners have increased the eligible lounges considerably (especially in UK)-also if travelling with a partner it's worth considering getting supplementary card.
Personally I think this is the cheapest way to access airport lounges unless you've status with a FFP
Hope that helps....

Quick question - does anyone know the lounge access is also valid for SAS Eurobonus DC? I asked because I saw some posts saying that they were denied lounge access for not having the right DC card. How can I find out?

It is valid, no reason to worry. Besides, why would they remove lounge access from a combined airline loyalty card first? These are preciswly the people that need the lounges. The problems related to lounge access have been with other issuers than SEB kort.

I would say it´s worth it if your destinations are where they have lounges. Although I have so far never paid the year fee. Not because I´m a big spender but I´ve just canceled and applied again (and collected more bonus miles).

I´ve also just now applied for a Eurocard that includes a priority pass (free for 6 months) so if you play it short term there´s no need to pay. (have a look in the SAS forum for further details)

Both of these cards comes with 1 free family card including the same benefits.

The lounge at ARN isn't much to "hang in the x-mas tree" (Swedish expression = not much to brag about), I visited it three weeks ago and they had some basic breakfast at the time I was there. Unfortunatly they don't have that many lounges as Priority pass and they are often in the wrong terminal regarding my travel plans. However, it is free the first year so sign up and see if you have any use of it :)

Lounge Access withdrawn
 

I just noticed that Diners Club Eurobonus Swedish card no longer will give the benefit of free lounge access. The new policy will be in effect 1 Jan 2012. Too bad. I think i will cut my card in two pieces.
I travel quite often but not enough to give me silver/gold status.

So... what card should I get now to get free access?

Does this change apply only to Diners Club Eurobonus? Could you change to Diners Club Classic to retain lounge access? (I regret I do not read Swedish, but appears these are separate products.)

No, sadly it does apply for both Diners Club Eurobonus and the Classic card. But to be fair many of this card holders, and I know several, at least in Scandinavia, have been bad business for SEB Card issuing the card, because they are only using the card to get free access to the lounges. They never use it to buy items from shops or the internet.

Now danish cardholders have to pay 95 DKK (Danish Kronen) to get access to lounges. If let us say, I have a sandwish, a cup of coffee and a Blody Mary I still have saved a lot of money, instead of using the bars or restaurants in most airports.

However if you are a danish Diners VIP Member, and I think most combined SAS Eurobonus Diners are, Classic also??, you will get free access to any Diners lounge for each 10000 DKK you are using on the card.

Diners (SEB Card) argument is that there is now so many lounges around the world that they had to do it.

I do not address whether it is a good argument or not.

I still think it is cheaper than the Priorty Pass, but I am not sure.
To compare if you only want the card to get access to lounges, you can have the card for 195 DKK a year, but if you use your card for daily use, I will recommend you to pay the fee at 495 DKK, because then you dont have to pay interest.

It is also discussed here at the SAS forum:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/sas-e...ye-diners.html

The Swedish deal is actually better: one free lounge visit for each 10000 SEK spent in 2011. But of course things may get worse in 2013, when members have charged huge sums in 2012 to get these "free" visits.