Tired of poor airport lounge experience: Credit card-issuing banks & operators plan big changes

NEW DELHI: Your lounge experience at big Indian airports could soon a change for the better with a large number of lounger operators and credit card-issuing banks planning to alter they way they do business. At present, aggregators manages lounge access on whose machine you swipe your credit card. Banks pay the aggregator, who then pays the lounge operator. Now, leading airport/lounge operators are planning to remove the aggregator from the middle and deal directly with the bank. They plan to have an app where passengers will be able to pre-book lounge, just swipe at lounge gate and then be seated in different areas (at big lounges) as per their credit card status, once the change is made.Many airports could go direct with banks in coming weeks and those places could see entry disruption at lounges, something that was seen last Sept too. “Aggregators have warned us of stopping lounge entry when we make this change. We are taking legal steps to prevent that,” said two leading lounge operators. Multiple operator and many banks are keen on this structure as they feel this will help improve the lounge experience for travellers. Right from lounge entry, which is at present resembles a “langar ki line” at almost all airports to differentiated experiences inside for people holding top end cards and those having free cards.“For banks, lounge access is among the key features of premium credit cards but the experience at present is not good. So hard-selling premium cards using this as a USP becomes difficult. Full service airlines are also upset that they premium passengers have to queue up in the same line for everyone with a credit card. So the need for change, apart from passengers, is being felt by these two key stakeholders also,” said sources.India currently has 70-75 lounges across airports and 80%-90% of them are run by the Adani, Encalm (which is at all GMR-run airports) and Travel Food Services (TFS). “Banks pay about Rs 1,100-1,400 per lounge user at metro airports and Rs 600-700 at non metros. The average spend is about Rs 1,000 per lounge user for banks,” said people in the know.With the number of flyers in India increasing rapidly, airports and fuel service carriers (FSCs) want to improve the lounge experience. A large number of flyers have credit cards so lounge users are no longer limited to those flying FSCs.Airports want to go direct with banks and have several plans to improve the experience. One of the key reasons for long queues is that a large number of flyers have multiple cards and at entry they check on which card can the enter the lounge. Banks are increasingly making lounge access spend-based. “We are working on web applications where a flyer cab log in with an OTP and link all his/her credit cards. So the portal will check whether he/she has lounge access available and then allow to book a lounge at the airport they are flying out of. At the lounge entry point they can simply swipe and walk in. However, this will require a lost of push and change of habit among users,” said officials. Then within big lounges, operators are planning to have separate areas for premium card/business/first class flyers to offer a better experience.