Is the American Express Platinum Card Worth it?

The Amex Platinum card is a must for any serious (and the aspiring) traveler, as well as for anyone looking to capitalize on some top of the line perks while building their points ware chest.

The (current) introductory bonus of 100,000 points alone is lucrative. I’ve seen this card offer bonuses between 80,000 to 150,000 points, (valued at approximately $1,600-$3,000) after a very reasonable $5,000 spend over a six-month period. Amex rewards can be transferred to some great travel partners including Air Lingus, Air France-KLM, British Airways, Delta, Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, and more – providing you immediate access to the three major US carriers through the Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam alliances, or redeemed for top tier hotels through the American Express travel portal. While the intro-bonus alone pays for the card four times over, the ongoing benefits you earn with this card make it a card you’ll want to keep in your wallet year after year.

The $695 annual fee is daunting, but the Platinum card comes with some incredible annual perks – most of which you’re likely to use without much effort. I’m able to take advantage of some of the larger perks while leaving some of the benefits on the table, and still net an annual benefit of about $600 per year. Here’s how:

• $75 Access to Centurion Lounge Network
• $200 Uber Credits
• $325 Fine Hotels and Resorts Credits
• $200 Travel Credit
• $200 Airline Credit
• $189 Clear Annual Credit
• $100 Amex Rewards

$75 Access to the Centurion Network of Lounges – While this perk is as valuable as you want it to be, I’ll assign an ultra-conservative dollar-value of $75 (though in truth, my wife and I probably get about $300 in value from it over the course of a year, given how much we travel). It’s my favorite Platinum perk and so important to me I had to list it here first – regardless of the perceived benefit. If you’ve never been to a Centurion or Escape lounge at the airport, it is an absolute game changer. Once you spend an afternoon in a lounge, you’ll never want to travel again without one. Currently Centurion lounges can be found at 13 domestic airports and 11 international airports, while you can find Escape Lounges at 14 airports domestically and 7 overseas.

A “lounge-less” afternoon at the airport can run you and a travel companion $75 for food and drinks easily…and more if you’re at the airport for a long period of time in between flights. Centurion and Escape Lounges offer complimentary upscale food and beverages (coffee/alcohol included) as well as fantastic amenities – pristine bathrooms, showers, lounge space to relax, private rooms to work or take calls, and at select locations, spinning and yoga studios. Most major US airports have at least one, if not both, of the Centurion and Escape lounges. The lounges are generally hidden in plain sight in the airport behind a pair of frosted glass doors, and after walking in and checking in at the front desk (which consists of showing that you are in fact a Platinum member by presenting your card for verification), you enter a swanky private lounge space with multiple rooms set apart from each other. On your way to finding a relaxing spot to hangout or snooze for the next few hours, you’ll first pass by the bartender pouring wine or shaking upscale cocktails behind the fully stocked open bar, before seeing the unlimited, buffet-style gourmet breakfast, lunch, or dinner spread in the middle of the lounge.

Platinum card holders can always access the Centurion Network lounges, and guests can access for $50. My wife and I each have a Platinum card and are developing a habit of getting to the airport a little bit earlier each time we travel so we can relax and enjoy the high-end food and signature cocktails in the lounge. We’ve even structured layovers based on the availability of lounges at connecting airports.

$200 Uber Credit – Likely the easiest of the Platinum perks to utilize, as long as you take an uber once a month, or order UberEats, you’ll get value out of this. By linking your Amex to your uber account, your account gets credited $15 each month + an incremental $20 bonus in December. These funds get applied to your next uber ride or delivery, so it really is just like getting cash in your pocket each month. The perk is simple and resets annually. Keep in mind, this is a use-it-or-lose-it perk (as with all of these) – credits don’t roll over each month, so make sure you take advantage.

$325 Fine Hotels and Resorts Credits – The Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts program consists of over 1,100 curated luxury properties which can be booked directly through the American Express travel portal. In addition to receiving favorable pricing at these upscale hotels, by booking through the portal, cardholders can take advantage of:

• $100 (minimum) resort experience credit (including spa, food and beverage, airport transportation, or other resort experience credit)
• $225 in breakfast credits for two people (based on a $75 credit each morning of a 3-night stay). Keep in mind that the credit is good every day of the stay and not limited to just three days.
• Guaranteed late 4pm checkout
• Room upgrades upon arrival when available
• Noon check-in when available

When my wife and I traveled to Charleston recently, we stayed at the Charleston Place, which we booked directly through Amex’s Fine Hotels and Resorts portal. The experience was fantastic – the hotel was incredibly luxurious, and we utilized the daily breakfast credit with ease (there was nothing we had to do, we just billed breakfast to the room and the credit was applied automatically). We even ordered room service one evening to utilize our resort experience credit. Keep in mind – generally the rooms offered through the Fine Hotels and Resorts program are at market rates or better! There will be instances where the program offers a discount on hotel rooms that you cannot get through the hotel independently. Incredibly, the price we paid through the portal was 25% less than the rate we found online at the hotel’s website – so we saw immediate benefits just by booking through the Amex portal.

$200 Travel Credit – Between the resort credits and statement credits, you can get up to $550 in annual value when you book a Fine Hotels + Resorts room within Amex’s travel portal. When you book a prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection room within the portal, you’ll earn an immediate $200 statement credit to offset the cost paid (keep in mind bookings through The Hotel Collection require a minimum two-night stay). $200 credited right back to you after booking and no signup required makes this one about as easy as it gets – it takes about a week to post to your account. My wife and I used that credit to offset the cost of our trip to Charleston.

$200 Airline Credit – Another pretty easy perk to take advantage of – if you have a favorite or frequently-used airline, all you have to do is enroll in the American Express portal online or in the app and any time you charge baggage, exit row seats, in-flight drinks, early-bird access, or other incidentals for the selected airline to your Platinum card, you get a statement credit for what you spend, up to $200 each year. Enrollment in the portal takes about 30 seconds. You can only change airlines once per year, so it’s helpful to think about upcoming trips each year and structure your “preferred” airline accordingly.

$189 Clear Annual Credit – If your airport has Clear (and even if they don’t…I enrolled when I was at SFO in about five minutes), this is well worth it. Clear is a biometric screening device that allows you to pass through separate airport lines and provides quick and direct access through security at the airport (and other venues around the country). We use Clear every time we travel and it cuts down our time in security to next to nothing. You can sign up in the Amex portal in advance (takes about 30 seconds to sign up in the portal) and can wait to finish enrollment until the next time you’re at the airport. It takes about five minutes to walk through the process with a Clear representative at the airport, which is generally less time than it takes to wait in the TSA Pre-check lines. Super-fast sign-up, the credit resets annually, and this significantly cuts down your wait time at the airport (and leaves more time for you to enjoy the Centurion lounge).

$100 Amex Rewards – Amex has some incredible rewards in their “Amex Offers & Benefits”  – which is essentially a continuously rotating list of hundreds of vendors that provide no-risk offers to get 5% up to 50% back on purchases, in the form of statement credits or points – simply for using your Platinum card. While some people might disregard this benefit, it can have some significant benefits if you spend the time keeping up with the continuously updated list. On average I would expect about $100 from this perk, however, so far during 2023, I’ve netted $295 by taking advantage of monitoring the rewards within the Amex portal, including:

• $200 – Marriott International Luxury Brands – Spend $500, get $200 back – I stayed at the JW Marriott during a work trip; all I had to do was use my Amex Platinum for the hotel bill and I earned an easy $200 statement credit.
• $60 – Marriott Brand Hotel Stays – Another Marriott stay earned me a $60 credit simply for billing the hotel to my Amex Card
• $20 – Men’s Warehouse – By using my Amex Platinum to pay for a tux rental for a friend’s wedding, after a minimum $100 spend, I earned a $20 statement credit
• $15 Stitch Fix – I linked up my Platinum to my Stitch Fix account when I saw the “spend $65, get $15 back” deal which was another easy $15 credit on my statement

By spending a little bit of time monitoring the Amex Rewards portal, which you can access directly from the app on your phone, I earned an easy $295 in statement credits simply by being a little bit intentional about purchases that I was already going to make.

In addition to the perks above, the card also comes with over $1,000 of other valuable perks which you may find additional value in – including:

• Complimentary Gold status within the Marriott, Hilton, National, Hertz and Avis membership programs – a valuable perk in itself – which provides several great benefits to any Marriott, Hilton, National, Avis or Hertz loyalist
• $300 Equinox credit, credited on a monthly basis and renews every year
• $300 in statement credit towards the purchase of a SoulCycle at-home bike
• $240 digital streaming credit – good for $20 monthly statement credits for payments made for audible, Disney+, The Disney Bundle, ESPN+, Hulu, Peacock, Sirius XM and The New York Times
• $155 in Walmart+ statement credits, redeemed monthly
• $100 towards Saks Fifth Avenue – up to two $50 statement credits every six months
• $100 Global Entry or TSA PreCheck credit

By being a little bit intentional with these rewards, you can really juice the benefits this card offers.

Important to note – Amex recently updated its family of card rules and introductory bonus eligibility. Going forward, card members will be ineligible to to earn rewards on other Amex cards (gold, green, etc.) after earning a Platinum reward. So, if you think you’ll ever want both a Platinum and second Amex card, you’ll need to start with the Gold/Green prior to going for the Amex Platinum in order to earn both intro bonuses.

All in, this can be a card that PAYS YOU up to $1,800 to hold annually after the annual fee, if you can take advantage of all the perks.

Bottom line – with an all-time high sign-up bonus and ongoing perks that pay for the card one to three times over, this card is a no brainer to add to your wallet and keep forever. Apply using my referral code here.