Straight to the Points

Travel-focused credit cards are getting more complex by the minute—but it’s still possible to make them work for you.

- Chris Dong

IT’S A FREQUENT SIGHT these days: stressed-out travelers lining up outside an airport lounge. The past few years have seen an arms race to build high-end hideaways at terminals across the United States: American Express, Capital One, and Chase have opened a combined 40 lounges since 2020, at a cost that almost certainly stretches into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet there still aren’t enough seats for everyone toting a premium credit card.

Access to airport lounges remains one of the key benefits of carrying a card like the American Express Platinum, which now has an $895 annual fee, or the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which recently went up to $795. But as lounges come to feel more crowded than ever, some travelers are recalculating the value proposition of their cards.

“What matters isn’t that your bank has lounges—it’s whether those locations are where you actually travel,” says Gary Leff, a travel-rewards expert and the author of the