Capital One has quietly made some changes as to which cardholders can access Capital One Lounges and Plaza Premium Lounges. Unfortunately this means that from January 1, 2025, Venture Rewards and Spark Miles cardholders will no longer get free lounge visits.
As things currently stand, Venture Rewards and Spark Miles cardholders get two complimentary visits each year to Capital One Lounges and Plaza Premium Lounges. Unfortunately, hidden away in the small print on this page as to who can access those lounges in the future there’s the following update:
Effective January 1, 2025, Venture and Spark Miles cardholders will no longer receive complimentary lounge access. You will have 2 complimentary visits to Capital One Lounges or Plaza Premium Lounges to use by December 31, 2024. Venture and Spark Miles cardholders can access Capital One Lounges at a special rate of $45 for themselves and their guests.
All other cardholders & non-customers can enter at the standard rate of $65.
For cardholders who are aware of this benefit, this’ll be a disappointing devaluation of their card’s benefits. While two visits per year isn’t a huge amount, for an infrequent flyer who happens to be flying from or through one of the US-based airports with a Capital One Lounge or one of the more prevalent airports with a Plaza Premium lounge, those free visits could potentially have provided a lot of value depending on their other options.
Just to highlight – these changes aren’t affecting Venture X cardholders. This removal of lounge access from 2025 will only be for Venture and Spark Miles cardholders.
This change is presumably being done to help reduce overcrowding in these lounges, but I’m curious as to whether it’ll have any tangible effect. I can’t imagine your average Venture Rewards cardholder is aware that their card provides two complimentary lounge visits per year. Of those that do know, I doubt a significant percentage of them are using their full allotment of two visits each year.
That said, airport lounges have gotten overcrowded over the past year or two, with airlines and lounge operators using different methods to restrict access. Capital One would be reluctant to do anything that would restrict the ability of Venture X cardholders to access their own lounges and those of Plaza Premium, so removing the access of Venture Rewards and Spark Miles cardholders seems to make the most sense.
It’ll be interesting to see if this impacts on how many Venture Rewards cardholders who were aware of this benefit keep their cards at renewal. For some, the 2x earnings, ability to transfer to travel partners and two lounge visits per year might’ve provided enough value to pay the $95 annual fee. With there being other Capital One cards available with no annual fee that can also transfer to those same travel partners, paying $95 each year for no lounge access might no longer make sense.
Question
If you’re a Venture Rewards or Spark Miles cardholder, will this affect your willingness to renew after next year? Let us know in the comments.
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If a person’s keep or cancel decision for this card is based on two lounge visits per year, the card must not have a strong value proposition.
Definitely will cancel my Venture. Zero reason to keep it once you’ve rec’d the SUB anyway.
I will probably cancel. While I do have the biz version of Venture X, I will likely try to get the personal version of Venture X next time they have an increased sign on bonus.
Funny thing is I used this benefit earlier at Plaza Premium this year when traveling with my daughter and I didn’t have any card that provided lounge access to me (my wife had 3 cards that could have got us in, but she wasn’t traveling with us). Now that I have the Venture X business, this benefit on its own would have been useless (we are family of 5 and between me and my wife, we have enough AMEX cards that provide cardholder +2 loung access), unless we were visiting one of the Capital one lounges as I could still get my family of 5 in that lounge using this card and my Venture X business. Nonetheless, I would be downgrading the Venture to VentureOne or one of the other no-fee cards now that I have Venture X business, which clearly is a keeper card. Even better would be if CapOne provides me an upgrade offer to personal Venture X for 75-80k miles as I’d definitely keep both the Venture X cards!
D
don’t hold your breath re upgrade. I tried to get retention bonus after one year with VX but Cap1 wanted no part of that. I could downgrade to Venture or Venture One but was told I’d still have to pay $395 regardless of either downgrade route… I ended up canceling the account…I should have never abandoned Chase and AMEX
It is interesting that they still wanted you to pay $395 despite the downgrade. Could it because your $300 travel credit was already in your Cap1 travel account and theit tech had no way to remove it after downgrade? If that’s the case, then I might have better luck with my Venture since it doesn’t come with any such credit. In any case, this is a good data point and I would probably check my upgrade/downgrade option before my annual fee hits the account.
No,
‘my $300 credit had already been applied in prior travel. What was discouraging is that the customer service representative was not in the least bit inclined to do anything. When I asked why I had to pay the $395 even though I would downgrade she stated that’s the only way to avoid the fee after another year. The conversation went kinda round and round, so this combined with other issues I had with Cap 1 cemented the fact that I need to sever the relationship. I wish you the best in your attempt to get an upgrade offer.
hmm.. certainly doesn’t feel like a great experience, especially when you have one of their most premium products. My relationship with Cap1 is just about a year old and I am yet to have a card (with annual fee) due for renewal with them, so I will look out for instances like these. so far, I their tech seems to be lagging severly (they took a month to update my cell phone number in order for me to be able to transfer points to FF programs), while I haven’t had a chance to test other aspects of their customer service. thanks for your feedback though and for sharing your experience.
It’s inevitable. Just look at Amex Centurion Lounge, I wouldn’t be surprised the complimentary guest privilege from Venture X Personal and Biz taken away in the near future.
What’s in your wallet?! Hope not a Capital One…worst cards on the industry. Have fun with that travel credit using their terrible app!
Great news less folks that don’t deserve to be there in the lounges
Richard (or is it Dick), could you please please identify who does deserve to be there? I’m onboard with smaller crowds. But, I’d like to know what the criteria is.
Don’t think it will be a keeper for me. Signed up when they had the 80k bonus with 4k spend. The lounge at DIA looks real nice so will try that out next year when I travel to Madrid but after using up all the points for this round trip and with lounge access for 2025 being eliminated for the Venture card I think it will have served it’s purpose and be dropped.
It’s either Venture X or no Venture to me (if you do value those $300 Capital One portal credits and 10,000 Venture Miles)