This is how I feel too. Maybe I don’t understand CF’s strategy behind Prestige, but I feel like they’ve shot themselves in the foot with such a high price. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to pay literally more than double the price of my gold pass so I can occasionally use the VIP entrance and sit in the building formerly known as Country Kitchen.
If it were a few dollars more than Gold a month (say $12 for Prestige vs. $9 for Gold)? I’d consider it. It seems to me that they’d stand to earn a lot more money by appealing to a much larger audience at a lower price point — Prestige would then basically serve as an easy way for CF to “upsell” the gold pass and squeeze a few more dollars a month out of a handful of regular visitors. I suspect that the number of people who are willing to pay for Prestige now — and the revenue CF will make as a result — is far lower than if they positioned Prestige a more affordable “upgrade” style option.
The obvious rebuttal to this is that some of Prestige’s benefits that by definition rely on having low usage — namely the VIP entrance and lounge — won’t work if lots more people are using them. But I’m not sure that’s true — it can’t be that hard to add one more VIP entrance lane, and if it’s true that only Country Kitchen’s lower level is being used for the lounge, opening up the upper level instantly doubles the capacity.
