So you have booked your holiday or trip away. Everything is sorted – flights, hotel, activities, etc and you can almost taste that first cocktail on the beach or that first beer in a bar overlooking a city backdrop. But then the realisation hits you – sitting in a noisy airport departure area for a couple of hours with 100s of people, all frantically running around trying to find a nice spot – when all you want is a bit of chilled out peace and quiet before boarding your flight. Well, thanks to Lounge Pass you can avoid that hassle and relax in a choice of over 400 lounges from 250 airports around the world!
Background
Lounge Pass is part of the Collinson Group which employs over 1,500 staff in 28 locations around the world. The Group is a world leading provider of lifestyle membership programmes and travel enhancement products, delivering premium travel benefits focused on the airport experience. Lounge Pass (founded in 2003) was created to provide a simple straight forward online pre-bookable single use booking service for airport lounges for all travellers.
Website
The Lounge Pass website is extremely easy to navigate – http://www.loungepass.com – allowing you to choose your country, and then your departure (or arrival!) airport. The lounges are listed for each airport with a description on what is on offer, the opening times, the location of the lounge, and most importantly, what the applicable cost is. The #NInja loves a simple and easy to use website!!
Booking procedure
Once you have chosen your required lounge, you simply enter the key variables – date, time, number of people, names of people, etc onto the form and proceed to the payment screen where you enter your card details and confirm the booking – it’s very straight forward and the booking procedure is easy to navigate. Once the booking is confirmed you are sent a PDF booking to your email that you should download and bring with you on the day to gain entry to the lounge. And that’s you done! Easy peasy! Pre booking will always guarantee you entry to the lounge – imagine just turning up expecting to pay at the door to get in and being told that it was full!! Prebooking is the ticket and you can book up to 15 month’s in advance!
Entry to lounge
On the day, you need only bring the PDF print out. Simply present this to the person at the lounge reception and you will be granted entry into the lounge. Most lounges have a smart casual dress code, but it is advisable to dress smarter and not too casual – don’t indulge in the sports gear, you won’t get in wearing a tanktop, shorts and flip flops!
Quick review of the lounge
On this particular occasion, the #NInja made use of Lounge Pass to get access to a lounge at Toronto International Airport in Canada.
The exclusively named Plaza Premium Lounge was found on the third level of terminal 1 near Gate E77. The #NInja merely produced the printed off voucher and was granted access to an oasis of calm among the busy bees in the main departure gate areas.
This lounge was split into two sections:
Lounge Area – rows of very comfortable individual seats with power outlets beside them. There was a TV in front of the #Ninja’s seat showing some live golf so was the perfect location!
Dining Room – a more formal area with tables and chairs in and around the food and drink offerings. There was a plethora of choice with hot food (bbq chicken, rice, cream puffs, caesar salad, soups, panninis, etc), as well as fruit, cookies, and some delightful little cakes. To drink there was an array of soft drinks, tea, coffee and of course a good range of alcoholic drinks for those who wanted a preflight tipple!
Conclusion
It can be very stressful travelling through airports and you can also be quite unlucky with how busy and manic terminals and gate areas can be – so the option to relax in a more calm and serene room / space with complimentary food and drinks on offer is something that should always be explored.
Think about how much you would spend on a sandwich, a packet of crisps and then a couple of beers in the main airport departure areas and you can be almost up to over £15-20pp! Compare that to the costs involved for relaxation in an airport lounge and it’s certainly something that this #NInja will always consider. The one big variable that you should always keep in mind is the length of time you would spend in a lounge – there may be no point if you only had 30 mins to kill, however if you had 90-120 mins then it almost becomes an easy decision! #NInjatastic
For more information on Lounge Pass and how to book in – please visit http://www.loungepass.com