* $49 for domestic Qantas Club lounges, $69 for International Business Class lounges (eg LAX), and $99 single-class 'Premium International Lounges' (HKG, SIN).
* Will be invitation-only, with invites restricted to QFF Bronze and Silver members flying during 'off-peak periods' and available only online, not at the lounge itself

More at http://www.ausbt.com.au/qantas-is-no...-lounge-passes

 

Thanks for the heads up, David.

This will only work to the benefit of both customers and airline if QF can restrict access to times when there is genuine capacity in the lounges.

Otherwise the lounges will simply become more overcrowded.

To be done properly there will be a considerable management overhead in assessing lounge available capacity which will change with many factors on both a periodic and daily basis.

There will also be additional pressure on already hassled QC staff in policing access.


If QF try to keep definitions of" off peak" simple (always the same time of day and the same for every lounge) sooner or later there'll be overcrowding problems due to localised and daily variations.


If definitions of "off peak" are flexible, the value of the passes to the customer would not be fixed since the key attribute of reliability of access could vary according to local circumstances.

Furthermore, the duration of access would also be critical parameter: how many hours before a flight is accessed permitted? The longer the duration of access the greater the probability of triggering overcrowding.

Can QF get the maths right?! Do QF actually really care about the overcrowding given a chance to grab cash (I guess QF's position will be revealed by the rules).

The day passes may undermine sales of QC annual passes since it would be cheaper to buy the day passes for ten visits per year (based on a domestic travel scenario and a $49 one off pass versus an annual $510 membership).

Presumably an annual pass would provide greater assurance of access (not as restricted to "off peak") so the customer will need to know exactly what to expect under the "off peak" rules to calculate their best strategy.

Could turn into yet another messy and unduly complicated QF "clusterkcuf"...

...thank goodness they aren't selling access to the already over crowded domestic class business class lounges and international first class lounges...!

 

A few factors at play here

- take-up or successful sales at those price levels will be interesting to see, though I doubt that QF will make it easy/transparent to see what the exact revenue gain/loss is.

- at $49 per person for a visit to a typical QP for a beer and a sandwich I can't see them being rushed off their feet with demand.....

- obviously QF was getting sick and tired of trying to play "whack a mole" with the selling of complimentary lounge passes on Ebay and Gumtree.

- way to monetise lounges and in keeping with the "sweating the assets" school of though that we have seen from airlines.

- an aspirational/marketing tool that also could draw in some revenue, makes sense to try to lure the punters in with a look at the inside of some lounges, even better if you can "make-em pay to have a look"!

- another (bad value) way of burning QFF points

- seems to be a further devaluation of the annual QC membership depending on your frequency of QF flights vs VA and JQ flights (where QP is generally unavailable for JQ pax thanks to different terminals) these new one day passes may even cannibalise sales of QC annual membership?

 

not sure it really stops that behaviour as it sets an alternative market price now..
Suddenly $40 is good value

 

The comp QP passes are more valuable because they aren't capacity controlled.

 

Absolutely agreed!

Not much of an overhead, QF already has systems to measure this and quite easy to compare to 'peak capacity' numbers and observe patterns. Pretty easy to spot the lulls and once you apply a block to known peaks, it's all gravy. But yes, those sets of numbers are going to come in for closer / additional scrutiny now this trial system has started.

 

Mods: can somebody please change the thread title from "Qantas trails..." to "Qantas trials..."? :P

 

Interesting to see how it all pans out...in the meantime, is there any publicly available information on why VA turned away from such one-off lounge passes a few years ago?

 

Sure....

 

Pretty sure they still have them. Can be purchase for $65. Not worth that IMO.

http://www.virginaustralia.com/au/en.../lounge/#entry

 

Lounge access during irrops is worth much more than $65. IME of a few days ago, AS BR access during a 5 hr delay in LAX was a life and sanity saver.

 

For 5 hours or more, I agree. But the terms of the Virgin Australia lounge say:
Presumably in the case of a multi-hour delay, the lounge would be occupied by members on the delayed flight (as well as those on other flights) and so space may not be available. If you tried to enter less than 2 hours before the original departure time, but the flight has now been rescheduled for several hours later, I wonder how the "max of 2 hours" would work.

 

It'd be a brave desk dragon to tell already pissed off people "sorry" but there is a 2 hr rule"..

 

I've seen some pretty tough desk dragons.

Tossing out people already in the lounge because it's now more than 2 hrs to departure - probably not.

Refusing people who are trying to buy a one-entry pass when (due to airline delay) it's more than 2 hrs to departure - I think it would depend on how full the lounge is (and is expected to become). If it's a WX delay affecting numerous flights, the lounge is going to fill up quickly with the regular members. A smart desk dragon would weigh up the risk of pissed off one-time lounge-users being turned away vs pissed-off Gold/Plat/annual members not finding a seat.