I read this topic despite the fact that I will likely never be a Centurion member, but of course all the comments make me never want to be one. Meanwhile in Platinum land the concierge service which used to be somewhat interesting has become utterly pointless; I had gotten some amazing recommendations and experiences through them in the past but they now seem to be literally outsourced to India now.

For this reason I've been looking into concierge services: Quintessentially and Velocity Black. Quintessentially is out of my price range for the services they offer but Velocity Black looks quite interesting. A Platinum card plus Velocity Black seems like it might be a much better deal than Centurion as it stands, and I'm even considering it.

I currently pay for Velocity Black besides Centurion, and it’s pretty good. Quintessentially service has been going downhills for quite some time now, and I rarely bother using it even though it was offered for free.

Velocity black has the highest success rate for dining in London from my experience, and the travel side can trade blows with CTS (based on my UK experience) and other travel agents. Centurion FHR still edges out wherever available. Both are pretty good for flights lately.

Velocity also has an art sourcing service — obviously, it’s not as polished as having a curator, but they can come in clutch if you have a renovation project, and the only alternative is factory pieces the interior designer will charge a premium.

Whether the service standard is sustainable remains to be seen — Quintessentially, Aspire, Ten etc. all have massive ups and downs depending on how many white label clients they take on, and it’s only reasonable to suspect Velocity would do the same in the future. While I haven’t used Centurion long enough, my friends’ anecdotes suggest Amex is actually more stable than many of the competitors.

Also, Velocity Black might be more expensive — depending on how you value Centurion credits. You could recover some fees with Saks and equinox in the states (and maybe the pitiful Harvey Nichols and ...... booze credits in the UK). There is no such chance with Velocity, and I think their founders very much believe they are positioning themselves above Centurion and below 20k a year Mayfair boutiques and well trained PAs + corporate travel agencies.

If you have to wait long periods on the phone, and fulfillment of requests is far less reliable than it was in the past, and you don't have a personal relationship manager, and they mess up your travel arrangements, I can't personally see how Centurion's concierge is really worth anything at all, honestly; it seems to be a net negative in fact. I can access FHR and Platinum Travel Services as a Platinum member (I know to avoid Expedia like the plague), but PTS is also a very slow experience on the phone and seems like Velocity Black is much less hassle.

I actually got a call from one of Velocity Black's cofounders directly to sell me on the service which I thought was kind of interesting. Not entirely sure why; maybe because I'm a tech exec and they looked up my LinkedIn; despite my impressive resume and while many of my startups look like they're going to exit very nicely I'm not personally wealthy and just have a healthy tech exec salary. Centurion is out of reach for me at this point and even if it were in reach I'm just not sure how I could justify the cost. Whereas Velocity Black is something I could conceivably afford and looks pretty interesting and could have been a big help on this trip to Italy and France my family just went on, not to mention possibly saving some arguments my wife and I had over how best to plan our days in Italy, and train ticket procurement, and finding restaurants in Milan, and figuring out how best to get to Paris from the airport, and so on. Can't offset the fee with credits but honestly not interested in Equinox and we get a small credit for that on our Plat anyway even if we were interested. Plus there's the $10K initiation fee.

There are a few statuses and perks that are nice like Delta Platinum, reserved tables at Centurion lounges, etc. but you can get Hilton Diamond and IHG Platinum with other cards, etc., and I'm mostly a Hyatt guy anyway.

I'm certainly considering Velocity Black. I'll keep my Platinum card despite the destruction of the Platinum concierge service; I value the lounges and the net cost to me is zero anyway.

Did you stay at hotels with concierges, and did you use them to assist with any of these decisions?

In Florence/Firenze we stayed at a "small luxury hotel of the world" collection hotel (via Hyatt); it was spectacular! We didn't splurge for a suite, but their "base" rooms were amazing, we had a incredible very personal greeting from the night porter at 1:30am including Prosecco and cookies (flight was delayed).

They had a 24/7 concierge service. We used them for restaurant reservations twice. However I'm not sure it was really the best, despite everything else about the hotel being top notch. The first night he recommended a "simple" restaurant which was actually the least good place we ate in our entire trip. Italian food is astounding everywhere at every price point so despite being the "worst" it was still very good, but that was underwhelming. The next one was also "simple" as the manager of the hotel assured us and it was much better; they had a large wine list and so on. It was partly our fault for not setting this up further in advance, however. I suspect that Velocity Black would have done a better job at securing last minute reservations or recommendations. We don't need Michelin stars every time but we do like out of the way, unusual hole in the wall excellent places, or hip places, and actually the Platinum concierge used to be able to do this fairly well, but no more.

In Milan we just stayed at a mid-tier hotel that probably had some sort of concierge but didn't bother trying to use them. In Paris it was just a layover at the airport and we stayed at the airport Sheraton (which I highly recommend if you have a layover at CDG), again didn't try the concierge. I would have loved to get help from something like Velocity Black however. We had a great time on our trip but a responsive concierge with a good reputation for fulfilling requests would have been nice.

It does sound like it's worth considering. One more caveat I would add since you mentioned you are in tech -- Velocity Black is even more big city focus than Cent. When I first subscribed, the app had a prompt asking you to select London, New York or LA when you first create your account, and the services are based on the selection. The list has since then expanded, but I am pretty sure it does not cover the Bay Area or Seattle.

It's still a solid travel agent outside of those focus cities -- but say you are based out of another country/city for a few months a year, and you need reservations for guests/meetings. You will be screwed with either Velocity or Centurion.

When I was speaking with one of the cofounders, he claimed they had local experts all over the world, even though they have only three main offices. It would be a pretty useless service if it literally could only provide expertise on those three cities. I do happen to live in LA, but one of the main reasons I'd use them is for travel to cities around the planet. He emphasized their global reach despite having three primary offices.

I mean, the old Platinum concierge service for a while was based in Canada, but they did an excellent job with European recommendations when I used them, including finding really cool out of the way places to eat and things to do. But Amex jettisoned them and now seems to be relying on Indian-based reps for at least some of their calls. I have nothing whatsoever against Indians - I work for a company with plenty of staff in India. But whoever they've got now seems to be just going through the motions at least in the cases I've tried, and I could do just as well Googling things on my own.

All over the world is always a bit of an exaggeration. In short -- if you are travelling there are definitely people with the knowledge to arrange most trips you would desire. However, if you actually have a second home there it would be a different story -- Residents and tourists have different requirements.

That provider was Circles, owned by Sodexo since 2007.

American Express (USA) apparently changed from Circles to Aspire in late 2014: Amex Concierge: What have they done for you? (see discussion beginning mid January 2015)

The first eight posts in this thread were moved from: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...nnual-fee.html

That's certainly true. However, whatever Amex is doing now for either Centurion members or Platinum members doesn't seem to involve much local expertise either. Certainly the Indian agents I've spoken with for the Platinum "concierge" seemed to have very little to no local knowledge themselves about the requests I was making. You make a good point about the difference between a resident and a traveler - thankfully I'm based in Los Angeles so that works for me. I can't believe, however, given their likely market, that they lack expertise on the Bay Area, the epicenter of the tech industry.

I'm aware of this change, but more recently they've gotten even worse. I was using Aspire up until the pandemic and even Aspire managed to give us some excellent referrals and recommendations. But the service quality started to drop in 2020 and right now it's really abysmal. So either they've changed companies again or Aspire has been cutting costs and they are clearly outsourcing some of their calls to India as multiple reports have suggested. Again, nothing against India, but the agents I spoke with were just going through lists of canned questions and didn't have any local knowledge to speak of for the European destinations I was asking about.

Didn't know Aspire handles for Amex US -- always think of them as having an Asia focus with different Singapore PB cards and Citi Ultima.

Do you know who Amex UK outsources to (if they outsource) btw?

Given the fact that the concierges for Platinum appear to be outsourced to foreign countries now, it's not clear to me it is still Aspire handling this for the US. I wonder if they've changed companies again, or if Aspire itself is cutting costs by outsourcing.

Aspire's website mentions 1,500 people globally, across our 25 centers in 21 countries around the world. They list job current openings in:

Americas (Canada and USA)
Singapore
Australia
China
Taiwan
Japan
Commonwealth of Independent States