The Amex lounge is full. When the exclusive goes mainstream

The pitch for the American Express Platinum card used to be a quiet room at the airport. The quiet room now has a waitlist.

Amex opened its first Centurion Lounge, in Las Vegas, in 2013. It now has 33 locations, after Amsterdam opened on September 17. Over the same years the company turned its premium cards into a fee business. Net card fees were $2.6bn in all of 2013. In the four quarters to September 30, 2026 they were $11.2bn. The annual fee on the US Platinum card has almost exactly doubled, from $450 to $895, in less than nine years.

The fee

The fee has risen in three steps since 2017, each time with more credits attached. It went to $550 in March 2017, with up to $200 a year of Uber credit. It went to $695 in July 2021, with new credits that Amex valued at up to $1,400 a year. It went to $895 on September 18, 2025, for new members, and at renewals from January 2, 2026 for existing ones. Amex now says the card carries "over $3,500 in annual value".

The access rules moved the other way: every change since 2023 has narrowed who gets in, when and with whom.

The crowd

Amex does not say how many Platinum cards it has issued, but it publishes the totals. Cards in force rose from 107.2m at the end of 2013 to 155.4m at the end of September 2026, up 45%. Card fee revenue rose more than fourfold. The average fee per card went from $41 in the last quarter of 2013 to $136 in the third quarter of 2026.

The fee rise did not drive people away. Amex acquired 3.1m new cards in the third quarter, 76% of them on fee-paying products. A year after the Platinum refresh, it said, 99% of the portfolio's spending had stayed. The cost shows up elsewhere. Card Member services expense rose 36% to $2bn in the quarter, which Amex put down mainly to the new Platinum benefits and higher use of card benefits.

The rooms are getting bigger, slowly. Newark, first announced in 2023, is now due in 2027 at more than 30,000 sq ft, larger than Atlanta, today's biggest. Houston will grow from about 8,000 sq ft to more than 23,000 by 2028, and Philadelphia from 6,000 to more than 12,000. Heathrow Terminal 5 follows in 2028 and Boston in 2029.

The rules now

Amex's access page sets them out. A Platinum member may enter within three hours of a same-day departure, or within five hours of a connecting flight. Guests cost $50 an adult and $30 a child aged 2 to 17, must be paid for with a physical Amex card, and must be on the same flight. Two free guests come back only after $75,000 of spending in a calendar year. All access is "subject to space availability".

For a member travelling with a partner and two children, that is $110 a visit, or $220 for a round trip with a lounge at each end. Avoiding it takes $75,000 a year on the card, about $6,250 a month.

Stephen Squeri, the chief executive, made clear on the October 23 earnings call that the threshold is a tool. "You've seen us do this with a $75,000 limit in terms of passes for the Platinum card," he said, "and you'll see other controls that are put into the system."

Where frequent flyers go now

No bank has solved it. Chase had nine lounges of its own and Capital One seven in June, Afar reported, against Amex's 32 at the time. Capital One has charged for Venture X guests since February 1. All three banks give premium cardholders a Priority Pass membership, which covers more than 1,500 lounges. "Any meaningful fix will likely require further access restrictions, which are generally unpopular," Jimmy Yoon of point.me told the magazine.

Our take

Amex did not lose control of its lounges. It sold them, deliberately, to as many people as would pay.

The numbers say so. Since 2013 the number of cards has risen by 45% and card fee revenue by more than four times. The Platinum fee rose 29% last year, and 99% of the spending stayed. A crowded lounge is not a failure of the model. It is proof the price can go higher.

Look at the shape of every rule since 2023. The cardholder keeps a seat. The companion pays. The member who spends $75,000 gets the old privileges back. That is not crowd control. It is a second, unadvertised tier: one Platinum card for people who run their whole life through it, and another, at the same $895, for everyone else.

For everyone else, the fee buys a menu of credits for Uber, Resy, hotels and streaming, plus a chance at a seat. If the lounge is the reason you carry the card, count the visits you actually get in, not the ones in the brochure.

What to watch: whether Newark opens on time in 2027 and how fast Houston and Philadelphia add space, whether the $75,000 bar rises, and what "other controls" turn out to mean. The real exclusive now is not the card. It is the spending level.

Sources

• American Express, third-quarter 2026 earnings release and statistical tables (October 23, 2026); Form 10-Q for the quarter to September 30, 2026; fourth-quarter 2013 earnings tables
• American Express, Access to The Centurion Lounge Network (guest and entry rules) and lounge locations
• American Express, updated US Consumer and Business Platinum Cards (September 18, 2025)
• American Express third-quarter 2026 earnings call, transcript via The Motley Fool
• CNBC Select, Amex announces two new Centurion Lounges (October 9, 2026) and Amex refreshes the Platinum Card with a $695 fee
• Afar, Is it enough to keep travelers loyal? (June 4, 2026); A complete list of Amex Centurion Lounges in the US
• The Points Guy, First look inside the Amsterdam Centurion Lounge (September 16, 2026)
• One Mile at a Time, Amex cutting Centurion Lounge guest access (February 1, 2023), Delta Sky Club access changes (February 1, 2025) and Amex cuts Lufthansa lounge access (April 10, 2026)
• Upgraded Points, Amex Platinum annual fee history
• Frequent Miler, Amex to add Centurion Lounge access restrictions (January 30, 2026); Doctor of Credit, Amex Platinum changes, 2017
• Chart, table and calculations: The Graze, from the sources above