Lounge wars

The base stats for the new Perth Business Lounge are impressive – over 350 seats, double the previous amount of lounge space, designed by Qantas’s lounge go-to architects Woods Bagot using regional materials and a “colour palette based on the Western Australian landscape” – and the design cleverly separates out the various areas of the new larger space.

“The lounge has been designed with our most frequent travellers from WA in mind. It accommodates the mix of corporate, leisure and fly-in/fly out workers with business facilities, a sports lounge to relax and socialise, and dining areas with single and communal seating,” said David.

The trick in Perth is to do just that: mix the hi-viz and suit-and-boot crowds while also serving both their needs. Part of that is offering things for the “wine and canapés” end of the spectrum while also making provision for the “large dine-in bar with sports TVs”.

In addition, there are separate business areas, plus lounge and dining areas suitable for solo, pair and group dining. Passengers can select from a buffet with hot food (Qantas suggests it will be serving curries, braises and similar) plus soup, toasties and salads, as well as a dish of the day offering.

In the morning, there’s a fresh juice station, and a cocktail bar with drinks designed by Rockpool between 4 and 5pm.

Qantas consulting chef Neil Perry is, of course, all over the food and beverage side of the Perth Business Lounge provisioning, and that multipurpose bar area is a smart idea.

“Customers travelling through the lounge will be the first to enjoy two brand new Business Lounge dining concepts – a state of the art Italian pizza bar with a pizza chef, and a wine bar where customers can sit and enjoy barista coffee and freshly made croissants in the morning and a glass of wine and canapés in the evening,” Qantas elaborates.

All of these innovations are the latest in the push to create lounge spaces that are superior to the terminal spaces that surround them. At this stage,

The trick in Perth is to do just that: mix the hi-viz and suit-and-boot crowds.

with significant investment into the passenger experience at airports in Australia and worldwide, it’s something of an arms race between the airports and their concessionaires on one hand, and those same airports and their airline clients on the other – and, indeed, between those airline clients, with Virgin Australia expected to take the next step forward in its new Perth pier by the end of this year.

The airport-airline arms race problem is exemplified most clearly in British Airways’ Terminal 5 at London Heathrow. Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food restaurant is very pleasant, reasonably priced (starters £6-9. 50, mains £12-16. 50, steaks from £17-29) and markedly superior to the food in British Airways’ Concorde Room or Galleries First lounge, let alone the Galleries Club business class lounge.

Yet there are concerns about the proliferation of restaurants and bars.

Often, airports keen to maximise their percentage of the revenue make decisions that are not in passengers’ best interests. Particularly in situations where new concessions are installed in sections of terminal that used to be corridors, general circulation or gate areas, there are real questions to answer about whether there are enough seats for travellers to pass through efficiently.

Nothing sours a passenger on an airport (and by extension a city and airline) than a miserable experience shoving through milling shoppers and crowds squeezed to one side by a noisy bar or – almost worse – an empty food outlet.

There are safety issues as well: how is alcohol consumption monitored in restaurants where customers can order wine by the bottle? Are airport restaurants setting airlines up for problems later, just like duty free?