Originally Posted by
Mama
Personally I believe PP have too many members, and mostly just membership as part of credit card benefit. Of course these credit card companies pay PP a lower contracted membership rate. Too many PP members out there, if any airline lounge continues to contract with PP, these lounge will not be able to serve their own customer. PP member crowd pretty much take over the lounges.
And apparently airport lounge is not a high profit business to be in. It requires large space and many staff, and endless food and alchohol. If this is a profitable business, you bet there will be companies so busy to set up new lounges everywhere.
I predict all airline lounges will stop doing business with PP, and the small numbers of independent lounges can not justify the value of a PP membership, and PP will go belly up.
Actually, lots of airlines and companies want to setup new lounges. But airside space at busy airports is limited and very difficult to rent. When new terminals are built these days, they almost always have more space dedicated to lounges and retail than older terminals, simply because people get to the airport earlier and so spend more time in the terminal than before. I don't know exactly how the costs stack up, but if taking in PP customers wasn't at least somewhat profitable, they wouldn't do it. And if lounges were not in demand, new terminals wouldn't dedicate so much space to them. That said, I do think that PP itself is devaluing its brand by overselling its subscriptions and not having enough lounges under contract to provide a reasonable service to all of their members.