Originally Posted by threeoh

I have two lines of questions to understand this change better:

(1) When was the last price increase? What price was it before that? (What % increase is this over inflation?)

(2) I know these could only guestimates but what percentage of humans in a given lounge are (a) paid club members (b) club cc holders (c) one-time pass from Explorer card (d) paid $59 at the door (e) *G on int'l Y itin (f) foreign *G on domestic F/Y itin (g) short-haul int'l J itin (h) long-haul J/F itin at a station with no Polaris Lounge?

People complain UCs are overcrowded, to solve this UA can either restrict access or build more / bigger UCs. In most stations that already have a UC I'm guessing expanding UCs is not possible or prohibitively expensive, though they expanded LGA and have been opening some Polaris lounges which at some stations have diverted pax (though at some stations they've replaced an existing UC). They've been trying and failing to expand at EWR. So what can they do to reduce the number of people using the UC?

Access categories (b) (c) (e) (f) (g) and (h) are all tied up in multi-year contracts (and the *A rules aren't likely to change anytime soon), so if United wants to make a change unilaterally and now it's likely change (a) or (d), and remember United also has way more info than we have about which categories of access make up the bulk of the overcrowding (though we do have some anecdotes about people thinking the beer is free, who are probably not (a) or (b)).

It could be that the $59 cash entry is not significant enough to bother doing away with, and that club members are contributing the most to overcrowding, that the Club CC price will also increase shortly as soon as the Chase contract renews, and that the two free Explorer passes will also change in some way at next contract renewal (or maybe most of those expire unused and it's a sweet deal for UA).

In essence, United is saying they'd like to reduce the number of people who get in by paying [by raising the price] and leave more room for int'l pax who are *G or flying J. Rough for you if you're a domestic road warrior, but can't say I see it as a bad choice for them.

Or it could all be short-sighted and the 10%-20% of people who cancel their memberships because of the price increase will float away from UA/MP in general and cost UA a lot of ticket revenue. But for all the people who are saying "I'm cancelling my membership!" on this thread, that's what UA wants you to do. They aren't betting that demand is inelastic and they can extract more cash, they're betting that demand is elastic and they can preserve a less-crowded product for their premium pax.

That's my guess, anyway.