Amex Took Five Years to Cross the Channel

American Express opened its thirty-third Centurion Lounge on 17 September, and its first anywhere in continental Europe, at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The company has had a European lounge since 2021, when it opened at London Heathrow, but that one sat alone on the wrong side of the Channel for five years while the network expanded across North America, Asia and Australia. Schiphol is the first sign that Amex intends to treat the European Union as lounge territory rather than as a market it serves from London.

The lounge occupies just under 6,000 square feet on Level 2, between Gates E and F, which places it in the non-Schengen zone. That location is a deliberate bet on where Amex’s cardholders actually are: the non-Schengen piers at Schiphol handle the long-haul departures to North America, Asia and the Gulf, which is where premium card usage concentrates. It is open daily from 06:00 to 21:30, which is a longer day than several of the airline lounges nearby manage.

The design leans hard on Amsterdam. The palette runs to blues, greens and earth tones meant to echo the canals and the surrounding landscape, and the centrepiece is a Blue Roast Coffee Bar with baristas working locally sourced beans. There is a regional food menu rather than the generic international buffet that airport lounges tend to default to. Whether any of that matters at 6am is a personal question, but it is a more considered space than the Heathrow location, which opened into a pandemic and has always felt cramped.

Access rules are unchanged from the rest of the network and are worth knowing before you plan around it. Entry is complimentary for primary and supplementary holders of the Platinum Card and the Centurion Card, and you must be travelling on a same-day departing flight. Guests are not automatically included on all card tiers. Given that Schiphol’s existing lounge provision has been stretched for years, and that the airport is one of the busiest in Europe, expect the room to be full at peak long-haul departure banks.

Sources: Business Traveller, AFAR