CC deal: Prestige Priority Pass for 100 USD?
 

Hello!

I found a gold credit card here in Japan that just gives you the priority prestige pass for free included in the normal membership of 100 USD a year.
Upon signing up you get 50 USD worth of points as present so it would knock the price of the pass down to 50 for the first year. Also included is access to most (all?) domestic lounges on top of that.

The card pays 1% of purchase volume back in points (100yen = 1 USD = 1point) for shopping for actual value or converting to ANA miles 2 points = 1 mile.

I don't really care about the companies point system but the benefits seem quite nice, with the priority pass being the most interesting thing of the package. I own the 'normal' variant of the card without the membership fee and airport benefits, and just got offered the upgrade.

Now the question, do you think it's worth it? I've never been in a airport lounge but the priority pass coverage seems to be pretty good!

No?

Many premium cards in US (CSR, Prestige, and Plat) give free PP access. Prestige can have an effective AF of $100 and comes with whooping 50k signup bonus plus has other perks like 4th night free and points can be transferred to partners. Generally speaking Plat and Prestige are considered to be superior to this Prestige card I mentioned...

A few issues there:

- The OP alluded to the fact that they are located in Japan. Depending on the situation, a US card may not be feasible

- While I really haven't looked into US rewards cards in a while, my impression is that cards that come with benefits as described or similar tend to have annual fees much higher than $100

- Comparing a Japanese card to US cards is comparing apples to oranges. If the OP had access to credit cards in both countries this may be a viable comparison, however in my limited experience, rewards on cards in many other countries are much poorer than in the US. Compared to other Japanese cards, this may be a good value.

Oh, sorry, i thought everyone here was American and few leftovers were Canadian and Brits. I didn't realize this form extended to more than few western countries.

to add to this, not knowing what other options are available in japan, if the equivalent deal was offered here (continental europe), it would be considered a very good deal.

Are you talking about the Rakuten card? I found this page which lays out a few options, though there is (or was) a Citi card that's not listed on the site.

$100 seems to be about as cheap as you'll get though.

How often do you
(a) fly
(b) from or through an airport and terminal with a participating club
(c) and would have time to enjoy the club benefits ?

You might get better responses in the Japan forum (Or maybe the JAL / ANA forums) as there are more Japan citizens/residents there who probably would be able to give more localized advice.

For instance, the deal sounds terrible (to me) because my country has credit cards that offer full priority pass (unlimited visits for cardholder + guest) as standard benefit. But this data point is useless to you because your country possibly / probably may not have those sorts of cards available.

Yes it's the Rakuten one! It's also the only card I was able to find that gives it away for this cheap.

Citi kind of lost it's banking license here and isn't allowed to operate any longer

I think I might do that instead then! Thanks a lot

Can't answer the question about how this compares to other Japanese cards, but I'll add this: before signing up, make sure you know exactly what type of Priority Pass membership is included.

Years ago, I was a member of...something, I forget what...that included a "free Priority Pass membership" that was utterly useless. Zero free lounge entries. It was basically a card and booklet that told me *where* lounges were, but I still had to pay something like $27 to enter one. Plus another $27 for every guest. None of them were lounges where $27 would be considered a screaming deal - in fact, most were worth a lot less than that.

Now I have the Citi Prestige card, which includes free PP entry for me plus two guests. The guests do not have to be family, nor on my PNR or even flying with me. I consider this reasonably valuable...I calculate it at roughly $10 per person per visit when assessing whether the Prestige card is worth keeping, so I'd say I reasonably get about $300-400/yr out of this benefit. Certainly enough to keep a card that has a net annual fee to me of nothing assuming I do at least one four-night hotel stay per year.

I would worry that a card with a low upfront annual fee has a weaker version of PP.

Sounds like you had the equivalent of the "standard" tier PP. If the OP's card has the "priority prestige pass" that he mentioned and it's the same as the "prestige" tier PP on their website, then it should grant free access to the cardholder but every guest is $27 each.