It was only when my partner and I arrived at Orlando Airport in May that I realized my crucial error: I had forgotten to prebook the one lounge to which I had access. The Club MCO lounge was full, so we joined the queue to enter our names in the much-longer digital queue.
After 20 minutes of standing around, we gained entrance to what looked like a breakfast buffet at a budget hotel: beige walls, tired carpets and a small selection of food that looked far less appetizing than the options at Bahama Breeze, the wonderfully tacky, Caribbean-themed restaurant in the terminal. Sipping on a weak gin and tonic, and picking at a sad cup of gummy bears, I had to ask myself: Why exactly was I so desperate to be here?
There have never been more airport lounges. Yet there also have never seemed to be more lounges that are not worth the hassle. Many are forlorn. Many others are overcrowded; sometimes the lines for the lounges are the longest in the airport. Yet we all still fight to get in. Many of us will choose to fork over too much in credit card fees or commit to flying on one airline to gain entry to these spaces, because we still believe they offer a taste of luxury amid the stress of travel. In our iPhone age, we have been sold on the idea that travel is no longer just about the act itself, but about being seen to be traveling — and being seen to do so in style. Just don’t tell those sitting at Bahama Breeze that they’re probably having a better time.
A month after my sojourn at Orlando Airport, I would question my lounge loyalty again, this time after receiving an email alerting me that the annual fee for my Chase Sapphire Reserve card — a premium credit card favored by my fellow millennials, which comes with access to lounges around the world — was jumping from $550 to an eye-popping $795.
This new fee was accompanied by a confusing raft of other changes designed to justify the bump: a $500 resort credit, $300 to spend at a list of restaurants, membership to Apple Music, etc. But even as I dived into this complicated mental math and debated whether I was ready to leave Spotify, my eye fell to the photo embedded in the email of the new, convolutedly named Chase Sapphire Lounge by the Club at the Philadelphia International Airport. Although I had flown through the City of Brotherly Love only once in my lifetime, I still found it alluring. The space resembled a sexy bar in a ritzy hotel lobby, complete with plush furnishings and mood lighting that appeared flattering enough to make even the most weary traveler look like James Bond sipping a martini.
While Chase has built a handful of fancy clubs (with plans for more), most of those my card gives me access to are decidedly less glamorous. In some of them, with their cubed cheese and powdered eggs, I’ve felt less like Bond and more like Melissa McCarthy’s frumpy cat lady in the 2015 action comedy “Spy.”
Ben Schlappig understands my sentiments. Mr. Schlappig, founder of the flight and travel website One Mile at a Time, estimates he has visited more than 500 lounges since he began chronicling his globe-trotting in 2008. He cites such unpleasantries as overcrowding and sitting next to someone exhibiting what he calls “airport behavior” (like chatting loudly on a speakerphone). Occasionally, when he knows a lounge will be one of the sad ones where the buffet seems like “a feeding trough,” Mr. Schlappig — who has premier status with American AAdvantage and Air France-KLM Flying Blue — even prefers to simply — gasp! — wait by the gate.
“At some point,” he told me, “when everybody has lounge access, it’s almost like nobody does.”
It certainly feels like everybody does. Collinson, the company behind Priority Pass, reported a 31 percent increase in lounge visits in 2024 compared with the year before. More than half of frequent travelers visit lounges, according to a survey last year by Airport Dimensions. The market research firm Research and Markets predicted the $4.21 billion airport lounge industry will more than double by 2029.
Once reserved mostly for older, frequent business travelers, lounges are increasingly being invaded by people like me: millennials who balk at the cost of a first-class ticket but can afford an annual credit card fee. Even though demand for travel appears to be waning amid an uncertain economy, what hasn’t changed is the extent to which social media and influencer culture peddle these lounges as a key ingredient of the good life.
With interest through the roof, little wonder that the lounge industry is becoming embroiled in something of an arms race. Credit card companies like Chase and Capital One race to erect fancier lounges to satisfy increasing domestic demand — and even no-frills Southwest Airlines considers whether to follow suit. International airlines are going further and further to attract those truly wealthy customers willing to fork over thousands for top-class travel. In Helsinki, Finland, you can take a sauna before consuming a reindeer burger. In Doha, Qatar, you can relax in a Jacuzzi, drive in an F1 racing simulator or take a nap in a private bedroom. In Paris, you can dine in a private suite on food prepared by the renowned chef Alain Ducasse, then be driven in a luxury sedan on a tarmac to your plane. If the people in economy found out how the 1 percent were being pampered, there would probably be another French Revolution.
In addition to building more lounges, many operators are trying to thin the herds by making it harder to get in. Capital One announced that next year it will take steps to limit access for members seeking to bring additional cardholders and guests, mirroring recent steps taken by Delta Air Lines and United Airlines. Lounges “tend to resemble nightclubs, the way they’ve gotten so popular. I’ve seen literal velvet ropes outside many of them,” Scott Laird, a travel writer, said in a piece that called lounges a crowded waste of time.
One credit card company is dispensing with the airport altogether. American Express now operates a private club in Manhattan for select holders of its Centurion Card (known as the Black Card), part of a wave of pricey members-only clubs that have recently been repopularized in cities around the world. Evidently, there will always be a market for living the high life — particularly if you can live it away from others.
Airports and airplanes have long been places where people are regularly and openly sorted into classes, and there is something innately human about striving (or paying) to get to the top — or at least a half-step higher than where you started. While many of these lounges feel crowded and unremarkable, they still allow you to cosplay, however briefly, as a V.I.P.
All this complaining is, of course, deeply frivolous in the grand scheme of things. Travel is a privilege. But money is also precious, and it’s OK to question what we’re being sold.
That said, there is one type of airport lounge that I remain deeply committed to: the arrivals lounge. During a recent long-haul flight from New York to see family in Sydney, Australia, my plane stopped in Auckland, New Zealand, after almost 18 mind-numbing hours of flying. When I cleared customs and waited for my final connection to Australia, I raced to the nearest Priority Pass lounge and took the most incredible shower of my life. I would have paid whatever they had asked.
David Mack is a writer and a former reporter for BuzzFeed News. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Slate and New York magazine.
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