Where it used to be all about the premium aircraft cabins and what they offered, now it is on the ground, before and after flying
Lufthansa says that these elite travellers
never need have contact with the main airport – they go through their own dedi- cated security lines – and have access to a personal assistant who checks them in and ensures they catch their flight. There are also all the usual trappings of top lounges – fine dining, day beds, showers (and a bathtub), office space and cigar lounge.
tickets only. The same restrictions apply to its Premium Lounge at Heathrow T4. Cathay Pacific’s Pier First lounge in
Hong Kong also now restricts access to Cathay’s first class ticket holders (business class passengers have their own version, newly refurbished), although it does also allow entry to top-tier status members of its frequent flyer programme as well as those with Oneworld’s Emerald top-tier members. This strategy of restricting access only to the crème de la crème of business travel- lers is becoming something of a trend. At Frankfurt airport, for example, Lufthansa offers a private terminal to its first class (and private jet) passengers, along with those members of its frequent flyer programme who have clocked up 600,000 air miles or more in the previous two years – which would make them elite by most standards.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
BREAD-AND-BUTTER BUSINESS Yet the bread-and-butter business travel- ler on a budget is not being ignored. The growth of airport lounges not linked to individual airlines but open to all those prepared to pay a fee – known in airport jargon as ‘common-use’ lounges – contin- ues to soar. Priority Pass, the market leader in this field since setting up its stall some 24 years ago, already offers access to 900 or so lounges worldwide after a record year of growth and seems likely to reach the 1,000 mark over the next year. Hong-Kong based Plaza Premium
Group, founded 18 years ago by a former senior bank vice-president, Song Hoi-See, is also growing strongly with over 140 lounges at 35 airports, including three at Heathrow. After he left the bank and started his own company, he became fed up with losing the lounge access he previously enjoyed while flying first class – so he set up his own lounge network. Many British Airways flyers blessed
with neither BA Silver or Gold cards nor business class tickets were relieved when the first independent lounge opened at Heathrow’s T5, dominated by BA since the terminal opened in 2008. The 4,000sqm lounge is co-owned by airport services operator Swissport (now part of China’s
HNA Group, which owns Hainan Airlines) and Priority Pass-owner Collinson Group. It functions under the Aspire banner, one of 13 premium lounges at UK airports operated by Swissport’s Executive Lounges division. And airport operators themselves are also getting into the game: Manchester Airports Group (MAG) runs its new Escape-concept lounges at each of Manchester’s three ter- minals, along with one each at Stansted and East Midland airports. It recently up- graded Manchester’s T2 lounge at a cost of £1.6 million, increasing its size by a third. For £21, travellers get free wifi, food and drink and somewhere to relax. Is it worth paying for lounge access? It is a moot point for corporate travel buyers. According to Paul East, chief operating officer UK/Europe and Americas at Wings Travel Management: “The perception is that clients won’t take a specific fare just because of a lounge.” Corporate deals with airlines can sometimes include lounge access. But if not, suggests Corporate Travel Man- agement (CTM) director Stuart Birkin, “travel buyers should be pushing for this as a value-added benefit”. Airlines may be open to such trade-offs, especially as lounge access helps build cor- porate loyalty to the carrier at little extra direct cost. HRG director Matthew Pancaldi points out that “if a travel programme is of a significant size and scale, but with little premium cabin travel, airlines might be willing to include in a negotiated deal a limited number of loyalty cards which give lounge access. It is always worth asking and you never know what an airline might be able to accommodate.” Another angle for buyers to consider,
however, is the corporate social responsi- bility (CSR) position. CTM’s Birkin thinks that “ensuring the traveller gets as good an end-to-end experience as possible for their budget is critical for good CSR”. He suggests that “paying what is a rela- tively small sum for Priority Pass or Plaza Premium on certain trip types – mainly long-haul – is likely to be beneficial to the traveller and their productivity, and we’re seeing an increase in requests to purchase such lounge access programmes, either via the TMC or by the traveller personally”. BBT spoke to several travel buyers
who say they’ve initiated Priority Passes for travellers, in some cases to mitigate
BBT JULY/AUGUST 2016 27
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