Amex BLACK CARD LOUNGE in my Hotel, Regent Taipei

Ben Hedges
2.4K followers
139 Video Views·Jul 19, 2022
We visit an Amex Black Card lounge in my hotel here in Taiwan, the Regent Taipei.
So I am in the Centurion House.
It's a Black Card members only lounge.
Well, I will let you know how I got into the lounge
in a little bit, but first let's take a look
at the hotel we were staying in, the Regent Taipei.
One of the few hotels in Taipei
where you can get such a large room.
I booked the Regent, an IHG property
for 108,000 Chase UR points for five nights
at 1.5 cents per point, a value of over $1,600.
Hey guys, so we are at the Regent Taipei.
We just checked in to this hotel.
This is the hotel that the film Lucy,
the Luke Besson film a few years back was shot at.
Very, very cool.
And the first thing I've noticed about this hotel,
well, other than the room being absolutely huge,
is that there are two TVs in the room, two big TVs.
One here, one over there.
So, you know, if you're, well,
let's say you're over in the kind of sofa area
and then you think, you know what, I might go to sleep soon.
I'm going to watch TV on the bed
and then fall asleep afterwards.
You can come and watch TV on the bed.
Or if your kids want to watch one thing
and you want to watch something else,
you can do it because you can,
because you've got two TVs, so pretty awesome.
I love the size of this room.
Very, very nice.
You know, first impressions, very, very nice.
Lovely size of the room.
There's a great walk-in closet over there.
The bathroom is nice.
Only caveat is that the view,
it doesn't really have a view, okay?
It looks out on, you know,
a few other buildings that are quite close to it.
So it's, you know, it's not like a horrible view,
like a brick wall in front of the window,
but you know, it's only on the fifth floor.
So it doesn't have a view of the city
from like a high floor.
So that's the only sort of criticism I would have.
Has a balcony though, that we'll check out.
And they also put us on the same floor as a lounge,
which we have access to,
because Mrs. Cretcher, who is a platinum elite.
And so, yeah, we can go to the lounge anytime.
It's literally just across the hall from our room.
Very, very convenient.
And there are pools and there's loads of stuff here,
sauna and everything, which we will definitely check out.
We're here for five days.
So we'll definitely show you all that stuff as well.
I'll now give you a bathroom tour.
All right, I'm just going to give you a little bit
of a tour of the bathroom right now,
which is, well, you've already seen it,
but it is really, really cool.
So over here, we have a big bathtub,
the mirror, usual basin and stuff.
You could go for two basins, that's my only criticism,
just one basin, but hey, you know, whatever.
Can't complain, it is a huge room anyway.
What else have we got?
So the toilet is actually in here and yep, check.
It is one of those Japanese toilets that washes your butt.
You have to have those in a luxury hotel in Asia.
And over here, we have a shower as well.
So it's actually got a bath and a shower.
Now we'll just show you a few more features of the room.
Ambiently lit cups, reading lights, cool lanterns,
a sofa area with coffee table and fresh fruit every day.
Our room had two queen beds with really good pillows.
There were lots of multi-country outlets,
as well as USBs, a huge safe and really comfy robes.
A unique thing about this hotel
is they also give you a real key, no key cards here.
But there was also one more thing.
All right guys, so this is my test
of whether a hotel meets my standard or not.
And yes, it does indeed have a Nespresso machine
and real Nespresso pods.
You know, some hotels, they have like third party pods
that are, you know, not actually made by Nespresso.
These ones are the good ones.
You've also got a nice selection of, you know, tea bags here.
Let's have a look at those.
That's oolong tea, chamomile tea, good for nighttime.
What is this one?
Black tea, so that's like an English breakfast tea and stuff.
So yes, in my opinion, for a hotel to be good,
it has to have a Nespresso machine.
Now let's check out the breakfast.
The price I paid included breakfast,
which is served in the lower level buffet restaurant.
There's a vast array of Eastern and Western options.
Here is a pretty standard morning for me.
I start with a Western style English breakfast,
followed by some Chinese congee.
Then I have a fruit plate and that's basically it.
Don't bother trying the coffee.
You will be disappointed.
Now let's check out the pool, which is on the roof.
They have these cool cabanas,
which at least in the winter, you don't have to book.
But in the summer, when there's more demand,
it's probably a different story.
The pool is actually heated
so you can really swim all year round.
But I didn't spend long up here.
I preferred the sauna and hot tub on the B3 level.
I couldn't film in there because everyone's naked,
male and female separate, of course.
Now, okay, I did say I was gonna show you
an Amex black card only lounge under the hotel.
There is indeed a Centurion house,
which is available only to black card holders
from Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China.
A Taiwanese travel blogger
had seen some of my Instagram posts about the hotel
and very kindly offered to get me in.
I'll put his Facebook page in the comments below.
The lounge is a small affair with really nice food
and it's waiter service.
No buffet here.
Oh, and there's good coffee.
So I am in the Centurion house
in the mall under the hotel, under the Regent Taipei.
It is awesome.
It's a black card members only lounge, all right?
Amex black card Centurion.
This is the bathroom, okay?
Because I don't wanna film too much.
I don't wanna disturb people.
But I'll just show you this bathroom.
Even the lighting in here is awesome.
It's lighting my face up real nice.
But yeah, just check this out.
You can see Centurion right there.
Pretty cool.
And yeah, so we've been having a really cool time.
A couple of guys here just invited me
to come and check it out with them, black card holders.
So I thank them very much for giving me the experience.
Now back to the hotel.
I'll just share with you one criticism
of what otherwise was a really good experience.
There is no way to independently control
the lights in the room.
You either had everything on or everything off,
except for these reading lights,
which did have their own switches,
but they had a very harsh color temperature.
But that's really my only criticism,
apart from the lousy coffee.
Seriously, even 7-Eleven coffee was better,
but everything else was positive.
So guys, if you want to stay in a hotel
that has appeared in Hollywood movies
with massive rooms, a great breakfast,
rooftop pool, and a black card lounge
that you probably can't get into,
the Regent is a great option.
It's located in an area of the city
that actually used to be the center of Taipei
before the city started expanding east.
If you are interested in staying here for free,
you could do what I did and use the signup bonus
from the Chase Inc. business preferred card
and book several nights through the portal.
If you transfer those points to the Sapphire Reserve
before you book, you'll get 1.5 cents in value per point
instead of 1.25 on the Inc. preferred.
Another option is booking with IHG's own points,
which you can earn through the IHG credit card,
also from Chase.
I'll put the links to both cards below
for you to learn more about them.
Please subscribe if you're new
and leave a comment on what you think about this hotel,
and stay tuned for our next video,
a review of Japan Airlines' business class
coming out in the next few days.
Bye-bye.
