I stopped by LoungeBuddy.com this morning and saw some bad news: they’re closing up shop next year.
LoungeBuddy has been around since 2013, and for a decade, it was a great way to learn about the lounges in airports.
American Express purchased LoungeBuddy in 2019 and from that point onward, lounge access could only be purchased with an American Express card. Besides that, cuts to the program began almost immediately, but the app was still available and continued to work well.
But earlier this year, Amex announced that the LoungeBuddy app was going to be discontinued. They had stopped Android access quite a bit previously. But now the Apple version was going to be inaccessible as well. The website was still available, but most people “in the know” saw the writing on the wall.
Let’s just say the ink of that writing just dried. Here’s what the LoungeBuddy website looked like when I visited earlier today:
Here’s the notification at the top:
American Express will retire LoungeBuddy.com on January 30, 2025. Users will no longer be able to purchase lounge passes through LoungeBuddy or access lounges using LoungeBuddy passes starting on January 13, 2025. Eligible Card Members will continue to have access to the American Express Global Lounge Collection™, which includes 30 Centurion Lounges and over 1,400 lounges worldwide.
While not exactly “new” news—some outlets reported it back in October—it might still surprise readers who, like me, missed it initially. At first, it looked like only the American Express Green Card was being dropped from the program. But no—it looks like Amex is retiring LoungeBuddy entirely.
When the app was discontinued, many suspected LoungeBuddy’s full closure wasn’t far off. Now, it’s official.
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