Originally Posted by
lowfareair
I'm wondering where AmEx is going with this. It could be as simple as LoungeBuddy was not surviving on its own and would have shut down if Amex didn't buy it for a song. I wonder if it has more to do with a combination of advertising and data - the people looking for lounges likely are in the AmEx target demographic of affluent upper-middle and lower-upper class and AmEx can now advertise to them for free, and the data could be as simple as seeing where people are looking for lounges the most, where they leave the poorest reviews, and generally find places to better target Centurion openings.
I'm hopeful that this just translates into a larger footprint - they could leverage the discounts that LB already has with certain non-PP lounges to provide Plat/Cent access, or even a Plat/Cent discount off of the "normal" price. I also saw elsewhere (don't remember where) a suggestion that they could start offering discounted "day passes" at the same price as before as a benefit to all Amex cardholders, when in reality it was previously available to everyone. Doing so could both reduce crowding in those lounges and allow the lower-level Amex cards to have some semblance of lounge benefit, much like a lot of overseas cards have limited (e.g. 10x a year) PP access.