I do get the feeling it's a bucket-list kind of thing and some people are in the lounge a long time, so it doesn't matter for them to wait for hours for a booking. Our business brings us in touch with a lot of inbound travelers from overseas, especially US and Canada, many AA Explats. I've observed pre covid and it's back the same way now, visitors making funny excuses to leave meetings early or unexpectedly have nothing to do in the afternoon or early evening (they say "catch up on some work", but really have booked nothing), I find out one way or another they're really heading off to the airport to be 6 hours in advance of their flight. The amount of people who read this Points Guy blog is impressive, these blogs have a lot of clout, they even come up in meeting conversations, and readers hear about the famous Cathay lounges and how to navigate them (which includes signing up for a massage as soon as you enter Pier F, btw - that's part of the instructions), clearly it's a coveted service to try. Anyway, this is just my experience, frequent fliers visiting Hong Kong definitely have an instruction manual that says maximize time in CX lounges and go to Pier especially and get a massage. Give CX credit for this halo I think.

But this is naturally a problem for such a service, if it's just first come first serve than people whose habits are more short-term in the lounge, will be disadvantaged behind the people inclined to stay for a long time. (That is, assuming CX actually wants those of us who do short stays, to get massages. If they just prefer it's more of a partner OW Emerald wow factor thing, that's of course their prerogative too.)

Or maybe I'm just wrong, do a lot of DMs in here spend tons of hours in the lounge? My assumption is local DMs try to minimise lounge time, not maximize it. Even when I occasionally transit, I'm trying to make it as tight as possible. I'd rather CX spend money elsewhere than hiring an army of masseuses in there to solve this "problem". But that's just my own opinion.