Citi Prestige Meet & Assist + Airport Transfer Service Review
Introduction
Citi Prestige is on the best credit cards in India for travel buffs and hands down the best credit card for Airline miles lovers. The Citi Prestige offers its users Meet & Assist service and luxury airport transfers at select airports in Asia Pacific
Booking Process
You need to call Citi Prestige concierge to book both the services (They are independent and can be mixed across different itineraries). The booking process was fairly simply and required us to provide our passport details for the Meet & Assist. A prompt email confirmation also follows and the entire process felt professional and well executed.
Meet & Assist
The Meet & Assist service can be availed twice per calendar year within select Airports in the Asia Pacific region. You can use them for arrival or departure as well. Since we mostly travel international in business class we decided to try out their services during arrival. Our only pending trip to Asia was to Vietnam this year and we were arriving in Hanoi at the Noi Bai International Airport. We traveled via Singapore Airlines in Business Class (Reviews coming soon) and landed at Hanoi on time. At the aerobridge exit, we were expecting someone to be there holding placards with our names but nothing.
We started walking towards immigration (was a really long walk) and when we finally reached we saw two people holding placards with our names. They guided us to a queue for immigration which was empty. We passed through in 2-3 minutes and then we could not locate them at all as the luggage belts were right there after immigration. We hardly spoke 5 words to them and we were literally flabbergasted. We initially though that they might be there somewhere but we finally resigned to 2 minutes of interaction as our meet and assist service.
It felt worse especially since we were traveling in Business Class and that immigration queue had only 2 more people. This felt like a benefit used which was worthless to begin with. Using at arrivals in Mumbai would have felt better assuming Citi ties up with Pranaam services in Mumbai which also brings a cart so you don’t have to walk long distances. Also, do note if another passenger accompanies you, Citi counts that as 2 uses of the Meet & Assist Service.
Luxury Transfer Service
Citibank allows you to use 2 luxury transfer services at select airports in Asia Pacific region. However, you can only use them once in one single itinerary. We decided to use them at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport as the distance was approximately 30 kilometres to our hotel. Citibank’s partner calculated the distance at approximately 32 kilometres and Citi’s luxury transfer service has a fixed distance allowance per city which was 30 kilometres for Hanoi. So we had to spend USD 6.4 for the extra 2 kilometres. One can easily get a taxi for USD 15 to the main city for a 32 km ride.
Anyway, we decided to pay as we were still saving money and we wanted to experience their services. Upon collecting our baggage and exiting customs, we could not locate the driver and decided to exit the airport. We found him right outside and he asked us to wait for some time while he got the vehicle.
It was a brand new Toyota Fortuner which was in immaculate condition. The driver was very courteous and dropped us to our hotel in around 40 minutes.
Overall Impression
Meet & Assist
- Felt like a complete waste at Hanoi which is not a very small airport
- Use this only at big airports like Changi / Haneda / Narita / HK for maximum bang for the buck
- They could have at least escorted us with luggage to our taxi (not even a goodbye)
- The vehicle was very well maintained
- The driver was courteous and took very good care of us
- Be careful to check City wise limits prior to booking (Although Citi concierge will definitely point out the same to you)
- Makes a lot of sense in large cities where taxi fares are high (assuming you don’t cross their city limits)
Have you tried any of the above services from Citi ? How was your experience ?
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