May 1st - Taking in the new frontier of passenger lounges
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I'm in Newcastle, whose international airport is the venue for a world lounge first: three tiers, loosely corresponding to economy, business and first class travel. My guest in the Aspire lounge – or lounges – is David Collyer, Global Vice President of Executive Lounges at Swissport. He tells me his vision for the lounges and how it sets a possible path forward for other airports.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder and you might be able to tell from the hubbub behind me that I'm actually once again at an airport. |
| 0:11.3 | But this is an airport environment that is a world first. I'm at Newcastle Airport where the Aspire Lounge, which you may have seen or stayed in if you were travelling |
| 0:23.0 | through Newcastle Airport, has now opened into a three-tier lounge. So you can have the standard |
| 0:31.2 | or as it's called classic experience. You can upgrade if you want to or you've got the right |
| 0:37.1 | ticket and your airline's |
| 0:38.4 | looking after you to Lux. Alternatively, you can even get into suites again either by paying |
| 0:44.9 | or by your airline bestowing you with that opportunity. The man whose idea this groundbreaking |
| 0:52.6 | three-tier lounge is is David Collier. |
| 0:56.0 | He is the global vice president for executive lounges for Swissport, which uses the brand Aspire. |
| 1:03.7 | David, welcome, or rather, I suppose, you very kindly welcome me to this interesting location. |
| 1:09.5 | Hi, Simon. |
| 1:10.4 | To have three grades, what's the idea there? |
| 1:14.0 | Well, I'll start right at the very beginning. |
| 1:16.1 | We look after 5.2 million passengers a year, or guests as we call them. |
| 1:20.1 | And we've been on a journey for the last sort of 12 months, |
| 1:23.2 | gathering as much insight, both behavioral, attitude and all, |
| 1:28.3 | looking at data, working with our partners, working behavioural, attitude and all, looking at data, |
| 1:32.4 | working with our partners, working with our airline partners and airports to understand what the future of airport hospitality looks like. And actually what our guests are telling |
| 1:37.0 | us is they want more differentiation, they want segmentation, they want to be able to upgrade |
| 1:42.1 | or downgrade depending on what it is they're looking for. |
| 1:45.2 | That can be dependent on the occasion, or as you say, the ticket, or actually just a bit of a treat. |
| 1:51.3 | You talk about airport hospitality. |
... |
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