Today’s Fabulous Fridays is about the expansion of the Coral Lounge network at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport where the brand has established itself as an excellent alternative to the airline’s own lounges.
The Coral Lounges are accessible with Priority Pass and a range of other memberships as well as through a walk-in payment, complementing the direct competitor Miracle Lounge, which offers the same access type but is slightly less quality.
Having access to the airline’s own lounge is always great but sometimes these lounges aren’t actually much to write home about and especially at Bangkok Airport, the Thai Airways Lounges for example offer a rather poor F&B selection.
Much different are the new Coral Lounges and to my surprise, the brand has now expanded even into the international departure area, following the opening of their great domestic lounge I wrote about previously:
New Coral Executive Lounge Has Opened At Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airports Domestic Concourse
There is now one main lounge for international guests open that’s adjacent to the (dormant) Thai Airways Spa, basically the area that once used to be the Royal First Lounge.
You can access the Priority Pass description for the Coral Lounge here:
I visited the lounge yesterday morning as I was flying to Japan, and this was the first time in ages that I had an international flight leaving from the C Gates, so I passed this one by coincidence.
The entrance is already promising:
Seating areas are spacious and comfortable (including private rooms pictured above):
Plenty of food and drinks including fresh juices and a full bar with barkeeper:
There will be another lounge coming to the C gates as a former Thai Airways Royal Orchid Lounge got dismantled, and there are now signs in the window that a new Coral lounge will be fitted out.
It seems like there is a considerably sized market in Bangkok for these contract lounges as BKK is served by so many carriers that don’t have their own lounges, and rather than sending their Premium passengers to an alliance partner that might have capacity issues itself (Thai) they rather use a proper contract lounge.
The current Miracle Lounges can be ok at times (ok, the First Class lounges are), but the Business Class facilities are completely overwhelmed. I think sometimes people don’t realize that they have access to the First Class Lounge even with Priority Pass, not just to Business Class.
Conclusion
The Network of Coral Lounges is growing and they just opened up a new lounge at the international concourse of Bangkok Airport (near gate D1, opposite the currently dormant Thai Airways Royal Orchid Spa.
With lounge memberships becoming more and more popular and Bangkok being extremely busy, the lounges at the airport are once again packed to the brim. Definitely, good timing for the Coral Lounge to open up a few additional locations in the international concourse after it’s already hands down the best facility in the domestic departure area. I wish they’d find some space at the other end of the concourse as well but there are already a couple of options including the very nice Oman Air Lounge.
