Originally Posted by
npretnar
I agree, it’s already begun. Airlines juice revenue by selling miles and lounge memberships to banks, but lose control of capacity/inventory management, thereby reducing quality. It will take a significant recession that actually affects the upper middle class to shake things up and get people to offload these cards.
I’m just shocked at the number of people in lounges (whether airline or AMEX) who appear to be newbies to the whole premium travel/lounge experience.
Regarding the Centurion lounge, as a card holder since 2017 (still fairly new I know), the crowding and degradation of the lounge experience circa 2021 to now makes me value the lounge component of the card at essentially 0. Haven’t been to a Centurion lounge since last June and I fly in average 2-3x per week with about 1-2 trips on average thru major hubs (DFW,CLT,LAX,LGA,etc.) that have them.
Except airline lounge quality has actually improved due to competition from credit card owned or contracted lounges.
It's not just the upper middle class that have premium cards. Plenty of people are on the points wagon due to increased popularity and awareness through blogs and word of mouth. Many go out of their way for free food and drinks...