Originally Posted by pitz

The lounges have turned into zoos that are often busier than the general airport terminals. The 'allure' is basically the nicer chairs, the all-you-can drink alcohol and the food.

I think some lounge patrons are also in denial of their alcohol abuse habits. I've seen people who have downed a bottle of Crown Royal in their lounge session, and certainly could afford to pay for the drinks at a normal airport bar, but having a $200 bar bill on their credit card that gets seen by their wife would be quite unacceptable. So they booze it up in the lounge where there is no monitoring of portions or of amounts consumed. In the lounge they can drink themselves silly discretely, while a person who drinks $200 worth of liquor at an airport bar "with service" alone might be viewed as a bit of a weirdo.