PS Expands Private Terminals While Rethinking Membership

By Olivia Hart

PS operates private terminals at four U.S. airports—Los Angeles International, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami—with Paris next, after doubling its footprint this summer. Founded in 2017 as The Private Suite at LAX, the company added Atlanta in 2023 before opening its two newest U.S. sites.

CEO Amina Belouizdad Porter joined PS from private equity after working in hotel development. Her perspective combines an investor’s discipline with an operator’s attention to service detail. The expansion follows concentrations of wealth combined with the density of lie-flat, long-haul seats.

The premium starts at $1,295 per person for shared Salon access and $4,950 for a Private Suite seating up to four. A $4,850 annual All Access membership reduces those rates to $895 and $3,650, saving one Salon traveler $400 or one four-person suite $1,300.

Based solely on those price gaps, the annual fee reaches break-even after about 13 salon trips or four suite bookings within a membership year, assuming each booking replaces the higher nonmember price. That calculation turns a large membership check into a frequency decision for the customer and a retention lever for PS.

PS’s service window is about 90 minutes before departure and 17 minutes on arrival. Instead of dividing staff among multiple tables, PS assigns one team to a single traveling party, concentrating attention during both operating windows. That design makes guest flow and team deployment central to service, though the company did not disclose staffing levels.

PS did not disclose revenue, occupancy, staffing costs or margins, so its profitability cannot be assessed from the published figures. For operators, however, the pricing shows a model that monetizes a short, high-touch service window and sells annual access to convert occasional splurges into repeat travel.

Commercial-airline travelers can skip the public terminal entirely. Departing guests use a private TSA checkpoint, while arriving international guests clear customs on site, requiring coordination among TSA, Customs and Border Protection, airlines and baggage systems.

Belouizdad Porter said: “PS is nine years ahead of any replicator.” Her argument rests on three layers: nearly a decade of regulatory and operating know-how, customer trust built over roughly the same period, and a network that becomes more useful as members move from terminal to terminal.

That trust includes recognition. On entry, staff may ask a returning traveler whether they want the same thing as last time, a level of recall few hotels sustain and even fewer members’ clubs match.

Members typically join for international travel, then extend usage to transcontinental routes and eventually short domestic hops. Belouizdad Porter said this progression turns an occasional splurge into a habit, making frequency, rather than the original long haul, the recurring economic signal.

The acknowledged weak point is the membership structure itself. Belouizdad Porter called the product-based architecture “outdated” and said PS is reworking it, while ruling out an extension into a conventional perks card.

PS also refuses brand sponsorships in the Salon and marketing contact when members are not traveling. Those choices sacrifice some short-term monetization, but they protect the attention that supports trust and repeat use.

What does this change for hotels, lounges and clubs?

For a hotel or club chasing the same premium traveler, the lesson is to compete on protected attention rather than more advertising inventory. PS’s mechanism is a dedicated team, remembered preferences and the removal of sponsor messages during the service encounter. That focus can support premium pricing even when the encounter lasts only 90 minutes.

Hotel and club operators should also weigh what the model gives up. No sponsorships means less non-guest revenue inside the Salon, while no outreach between trips protects the relationship but removes opportunities to stimulate additional visits. The balance is deliberate, not incidental.

For PS itself, the membership rework will show whether travelers use the network across LAX, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami, and eventually Paris, rather than saving All Access for a single trip. The $4,850 fee becomes more useful as it generates repeated per-traveler revenue; if usage stays occasional, it becomes a barrier to habit.

Paris will test whether the model can reproduce its regulatory coordination and service recognition across a new market. The company’s next phase hinges less on adding another benefit than on preserving the same attention-limited promise while its footprint grows.