There are lots of great benefits to the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card (review), including a $300 annual travel credit, triple points on dining and travel, and more. There’s not much of a learning curve to taking advantage of the card’s benefits. For example, the $300 annual travel credit is applied automatically to any eligible travel purchase.
The one significant Chase Sapphire Reserve perk that needs to be activated is the Priority Pass membership. I think this is worth specifically pointing out since some people don’t realize there’s an activation process. Just recently I was entering a Priority Pass lounge, and the person in front of me was being denied for trying to enter with a Chase Sapphire Reserve, rather than with a Priority Pass membership. “But I was told my card came with a Priority Pass membership.”
It does indeed, but you have to activate it.
In this post:
What is the Chase Sapphire Reserve’s Priority Pass membership?
Priority Pass is the world’s largest network of independent airport lounges, with over 1,300 member lounges around the world. Priority Pass as such doesn’t operate lounges, but rather it’s a program that pays third party lounges to admit its members. While you can buy a Priority Pass membership directly, this is also offered as a perk on many premium credit cards.
In the case of the Chase Sapphire Reserve, both the primary cardmember and authorized users are eligible for a Priority Pass membership. That can be an especially good deal, since you can add authorized users to the card for just $75 each, which is a heck of a deal for an annual lounge membership, if nothing else.
How many guests can you bring into lounges?
The Priority Pass membership issued through the Chase Sapphire Reserve allows members to bring two guests into lounges with them (in addition to the cardmember, for a total of three people). It doesn’t matter if these are family members or friends.
Do note that while this is Chase’s policy, some individual lounges may have further restrictions on how many people can be brought in. For example, some lounges only allow Priority Pass members to bring at most one guest with them, so make sure you check Priority Pass’ website for the lounge you plan on visiting.
Which Priority Pass locations can you access?
The Priority Pass membership offered with the Chase Sapphire Reserve gets you access to all Priority Pass lounges around the globe, and you can make an unlimited number of visits. In other words, you could visit multiple lounges at the same airport on the same day if you wanted to.
Also note that the Priority Pass membership issued through the card offer credits to Priority Pass restaurants. Priority Pass has partnered with select airport restaurants, where cardmembers can receive a credit towards food & drinks in lieu of access to a lounge.
The membership through Chase cards also offers those credits, which is worth calling out, because memberships issued through American Express cards specifically exclude that.
How do you activate your Priority Pass membership?
The process of activating your Chase Sapphire Reserve Priority Pass membership is quite easy. Go to the “Card Benefits” section of the Ultimate Rewards website for your card. Once there, just scroll down until you see the section for “Complimentary Airport Lounge Access.”
There you’ll see an option to activate your membership. Once you select that option, the card should be mailed to you within two to three weeks at your address on file (though often it comes even faster than that).
How do you activate memberships for authorized users?
When you click the button to activate your Priority Pass membership, you’ll be sent Priority Pass memberships for the primary cardmember and all authorized users. All the cards will show up at your address, and then you can distribute them.
The only slight complication is if you request these cards and then later add an authorized user. The Chase website will still show the membership as being “activated,” so to get a Priority Pass membership for an authorized user added on after the fact you’ll need to call the number on the back of your card.
How do you get a Priority Pass mobile membership?
Priority Pass also offers mobile membership cards, which I appreciate, since it’s one less card you have to carry in your wallet. In order to activate this you first need to wait for your physical Priority Pass card to arrive in the mail, since it will come with a letter that has a PIN, and you need that PIN to activate your online membership. Make sure you don’t throw away the letter you get with the Priority Pass card, at least not before jotting down the PIN.
Once you have that you can download the Priority Pass app and then sign-up for an account, where you’ll get a mobile membership card, which you can add to your Apple Wallet.
Unfortunately there’s not a practical way to get access to Priority Pass lounges before your card arrives in the mail, so make sure you leave a few weeks between when you activate your membership through Chase’s website, and when you’re actually traveling.
Bottom line
The Priority Pass membership offered with the Chase Sapphire Reserve is one of the card’s best perks, and one of the main points of differentiation between this and the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (review). This benefit does require activation, so that’s one of the first things you’ll want to do after receiving the card.
While several premium credit cards offer Priority Pass memberships nowadays, one awesome perk with those issued by Chase is that they offer credits at Priority Pass restaurants. That can save you a huge amount of money. That’s not even accounting for all of the other lounges you get access to around the globe.
What has your experience been with the Chase Sapphire Reserve Priority Pass membership?
I agree with the card basically has become useless. There never seems to be a Priority Pass lounge in any of the terminals that I frequent. So I am thinking perhaps we should request a credit of the $300, but you do get it back when you purchase it, it becomes a credit.
Kristina is obviously from Jupiter or Mars and has no idea that because of the pandemic and also cost-cutting some lounges are closed.
This used to be a great benefit, but now? Not so much. LAX is my home airport and ALL of the priority pass lounges and restaurants appear to be gone or closed. How can there be none available in one of the world's busiest airports? In other airports, I'm lucky to find one or two when there used to be multiple options. And they aren't always accessible. This was one of my main perks from the CSR and I'm considering dropping it next year if this doesn't improve.
I found that at SFO and LAX my priority pass membership was basically useless. The restrictions to PP lounge access made it so I could never use the lounge when I was at the airport.
PDX used to be an amazing PP location but now that has become more limited but at least you can get a free sit down meal(or whiskey tasting if you don’t need to work).
So basically, depending on where you live and fly out of the benefit really changes.
In many ways this card is great and most people do not give it enough credit.
The travel credit can be basically taken at face value, then with the global entry credits, priority pass membership and value of the points it can easily be worth the annual fee.
The 50% pay yourself back for certain purchases and redemptions with Chase travel is can bring a lot of value especially when combined with other Chase cards.
Thanks, Ben, for the reminder of this great benefit. If you don't have the PIN from the original mailer, is there another way to activate the mobile pass?