Originally Posted by
A_Lee
My personal opinion is that the OZ lounges are fairly equal to the KE lounge in the main terminal. The new KE lounge in the concourse though is horrible in my opinion, due mainly to the interior design. I'm the first to admit that some will like the design. For me though it simply looks like absolutely horrible - and seems to be more of a classroom than a lounge. To each there own. I'd still recommend anyone visiting the concourse at ICN to try it out, along with the OZ lounge and see which one you like best. The food selection at the KE lounge I would say is good. At the OZ lounge, the food selection was poor when it first opened, but they seem to have improved recently, so likely similar there, though again comes down to one's individual tastes.
It's been probably a year now since I was in the KE lounge, so I might pop in there again to see if anything's changed.
As Bobby Brown though says, it's only a Priority Pass survey and says nothing about the lounge in terms of overall airport lounges. Priority Pass lounges are in general horrible, so being the best Priority Pass lounge isn't really saying much. I'm guessing most of us have lounge access via other methods than Priority Pass, so for most choosing one or the other probably isn't even an option.
I'm not sure how the selection process was done in choosing this as the best lounge, but I can see all sorts of pitfalls in causing this lounge to be chosen when it might not even be liked by the majority. For instance, looking only at ICN, if you were to have people vote for their favorite lounge between the KE main terminal, OZ main terminal, KE concourse, and OZ concourse, but could only vote for one, what do you think the outcome would be? If three of the four are very similar, but the KE concourse lounge is quite different, even though most might like the three similar lounges, only being able to vote for one would divide their votes, and the KE concourse lounge could easily win with only being preferred by a minority of the people. So if they didn't take this effect into account, the voting is absolutely meaningless. If they did, and the KE concourse lounge is truly the best of the PP lounges, then so be it. It doesn't really matter to me, because I don't care if people in general agree with me or not. I know what I like and what I don't like, and I don't like KE concourse.
Another factor is that more people may have tried the KE lounge compared to the OZ lounges, so those who never tried the OZ lounge naturally wouldn't vote for it.
Thanks for the long input. Nevertheless, it is a poor argument.
First, PP survey says much about the overall airport lounges at ICN accounting to the fact that all airport lounges at ICN with the exception of KE lounge at the main terminal and CX lounge at Concourse A participate PP. PP survey might be meaningless for some airports but ICN.
Second, you do not know the selection process as you said, so how could you assume that people were allowed to pick only one? They could have picked multiple, or they were supposed to rate any lounge that they have visited on 10-point scale. There are numerous methods to take survey, but your example considered just one method. Hence what you argued in the fourth paragraph does not stand valid at all. BTW, KE lounge at the main terminal is not available for PP members.
Third, there is no way more people could have tried the KE lounge at Concourse A than the OZ lounges at the main terminal and Concourse A. Given the nature that all PP members have access to OZ lounge at the main terminal while KE lounge and OZ lounge at Concourse A can be accessed by only those who depart from Concourse A, far more PP members should have used either of the OZ lounges than the KE lounge.
This survey should have been published using statistics with reasonable sampling size while considering sampling error. In any case, this is more dependable than what
A Lee says. Finally, we can refer a source now if some FTers happen to ask which lounge is the best at ICN.