Priority Pass Portland Airport: New Rules for Restaurant Visits
Last year Priority Pass launched a new lounge option for cardholders — a $28 credit credit per person at participating restaurants in select airports. I was thrilled to see this, for shorter layovers I sometimes prefer a decent meal over a work space. This was a particularly great addition for Portland airport (PDX) where the Alaska lounge can quickly become crowded and limits placed on Priority Pass access.
Portland is particularly great because they have THREE Priority Pass restaurant options:
- Capers Cafe Le Bar (Terminal C) which offers food to go or dine in options.
- House Spirits Distillery (Terminal C) the only airport distillery tasting room in the world.
- Capers Market (Terminal D) which offers fresh seafood as well as food and snacks to go.
The House Spirits Distillery in Terminal C
Since there is no restriction (as yet) on how many Portland lounges you can visit with your Priority Pass in one day and you’re allowed a guest at the restaurants, this is an incredibly generous amenity and one that people have been quick to take advantage of. Understandably, Priority Pass has started to tighten some things up. Last fall, sales of beer and wine to go at Capers Market became excluded.
And they’ve tightened things up again — an outbound boarding pass is now required for both Capers Cafe Le Bar and Capers Market.
It’s on the website (which I didn’t check til after the fact) but I only found out by accident. I flew in to Portland last Saturday and decided to grab a sandwich to eat in the car on the way to Willamette instead of stopping by the Alaska lounge for animal crackers and cut veggies. Capers Cafe was on the way out and I had no trouble using my Priority Pass card.
Sunday I had more time before my flight home and decided to check out Capers Market for the first time. As I was selecting my fancy snacks I overheard the attendant telling another customer they needed an outbound boarding pass to use their Priority Pass card. Turns out the new rule went into effect a few weeks ago, though enforcement (as I unintentionally experienced) is apparently much stricter at Capers Cafe than Capers Market.
A disappointing, but not unreasonable restriction. Hopefully Priority Pass won’t discontinue multiple restaurant options altogether.
So be aware if you’re planning to visit a Priority Pass Portland lounge or restaurant on your way out of the airport — Capers Market is out, Capers Cafe is iffy, but House Spirits Distillery and the Alaska lounge have no restrictions, unless they’re overcrowded.
This is an example of why we can’t have nice things. Lucky they didn’t do away with all of this. The restaurant in Denver went out of business.
Actually great news about Denver! Timberline is still an option, it’s the smoking lounge that’s off limits 🙂
95% of America will never travel thru Portland. But hey, keep it weird
As always bloggers expose something nice people take advantage until the point that nice feature is no longer offered.
Thanks for the heads up Keri.
The only other airport better Priority Pass options than PDX is Sydney.
$36 AUD credit, hopefully they don’t tighten up their restrictions.
I’ll have to update my own blog review with this new info.
Thanks again!
will be in PDX in a couple of weeks, will keep in mind.