Our Fabulous Fridays topic this week is PriorityPass and it’s option to facilitate the LuxxLounge at Frankfurt Airport as an arrivals lounge as most airlines don’t offer this service.
Apart from Lufthansa which offers their Welcome Lounge to select Premium Passengers of Lufthansa and United Airlines flights other carriers don’t offer arrival lounge service at Frankfurt Airport.
Back in the day US Airways used to have an agreement with the Sheraton Frankfurt Airport Hotel which until recently also allowed SPG Platinum members to use the hotels club lounge even if they weren’t a registered guest – both of this is ancient history now.
Last week I arrived on Qatar Airways Business Class at Frankfurt Airport at 7:30am and had a rental car reservation for 10am (I need to drop it at roughly the same time next week so no point to pick it up earlier and get dinged with an extra charge).
You can access the PriorityPass website with the details of the LuxxLounge here.
Since I got the Priority Pass Select through Amex Platinum which allows unlimited complimentary visits to their partner lounges I decided to seek out the LuxxLounge at Frankfurt Terminal 1 which I knew previously as being an Admirals Club prior to American moving to Terminal 2. In fact between 2008-2011 I was there every 10 days or so as I flew American extremely often.
Even though the lounge looks exactly the same and offers the same amenities it’s now just a random contract lounge for a variety of carriers and lounge pass services.
I was surprised by their sign out front offering access to non-membership affiliated travelers at the bargain price of 30.00 EURO per person.
On top of all this the shower facilities are chargeable at a rate of 5.00 EUR per visit which is ok if you get in for free but maybe not so if you pay 30 bucks.
The lounge was crammed but I found some space for myself. It’s not allowed to leave bulky baggage at a storage upfront ‘for security reasons’ so you have to drag your big baggage with your through the lounge taking even more space away and I wasn’t the only guest with a large suitcase plus carry on. Internet was free and fast and I certainly appreciated the hot shower in the morning and 5 EUR was a small price to pay for it.
Breakfast was mediocre at best – Frankfurter Sausages in the morning – some packaged cheese and cold cut as well as bread rolls. Alcoholic beverages were already available in the early morning as well, I guess those must go well with the sausages. I wasn’t able to take any pictures as it was really full and I’d have to erase every single person on the picture.
The LuxxLounge is outside the secure area on top of the escalator, attached to the skybridge from the Sheraton Hotel. This means you can always access it when you’re at the airport. You don’t need to be a ticketed passenger.
Conclusion
If you can get into this lounge through a membership then fine by all means do it. I’d never pay 30 EUR for it though because it’s absolutely not worth it. The shower is a good reason why one would go here and maybe you need to print or copy something so their business center is a compelling argument as well.
The PriorityPass has come handy for me multiple times this year where I wanted to use a lounge when traveling on an airline that I didn’t have status with or the provided option isn’t really great. I factor the value of PriorityPass into my annual fee of the credit card when I decided to either keep it or to dump it.
