hfly

Sunrisegirl. Get your facts straight please. Not only is Hiddy now asking how their lounges are run (when a few short posts ago, he claimed that he did)

Paralytic

Really? You don't think the outsourcing model used by most of the world for so many services, include BA for their check-in and lounge staff at their outstations and regional airports, would work for lounges?

For example, the DFW lounge I was in a few weeks ago has a central reception and then individual lounges. The BA lounge is manned by local staff and the BA staff don't get there until 2-3 hours before the flight departs.

I guess that is one lounge with that model, with BA paying a monthly lease for the lounge to stay open, and then a per-passenger charge.

IMO, this thread is a great example of people applying their own view of the world to BA operations and ending up with all sorts of wrong assumptions.

corporate-wage-slave

Just to clarify: the impression I got was that in some locations - and I think he said the US and Asia - was that the lounge may be BA on the outside, but that the operation of it leads to a per customer charge, either to the airport owner or to the lounge operator itself. BA on the outside, may be not BA on the inside. Either way, anyone who is in business will know it's not difficult to come up with a business case if you really need to. If you think about it, logically it can be the only reason this happened: they wouldn't make a change purely to reduce service unless the numbers (dodgy or otherwise) stack up.

SRG: I know you are correct about LGW, though they did struggle with my booking 2 weeks ago when my flight was cancelled, and they asked me - very politely as they always are in LGW - to return down to the concourse.

Paralytic

Agree completely. Large organizations can make mistakes.

So, is this the crux of the argument against the removal of the benefit: That BA have removed the benefit to save costs, but they've got it wrong and will lose more business because of it.

If you're right, then surely they'll bring the benefit back? If they don't bring it back, then perhaps that line of thought is wrong.

How many people cancelled their flights and booked elsewhere because of the change? How many actually took the effort to phone up and complain? I still think this thread is exponentially magnifying the real-world impact of this change.

randomflyer

In all of the time I've been reading SRG's postings about LGW and BA, I cannot imagine many of us FTers ever thought she did not get her facts straight. Her postings always seem well informed and fill in important imformation blanks that outsiders to BA are not privy to. She has a great deal of knowledge most especially regarding lounges.

I found her posting a number of pages back very interesting. It was the one about the LGW lounges being populated by eJ pax who were filling their bags with goodies for their eJ flights.

If she says this has been a problem, then I believe her. No manner of empirical arguments from others surmising this may or not be the case with LGW has as much gravitas as her message from the inside. She has a history of knowing what is going on at her airport.

As former GHC myself, it's a shame this was removed. But if LGW is any example of how BA feel the perk MAY be misused, then guess they removed it.

Being a company that seem to pay attention to their customers, if they get enough complaint about this and it is shown to BA by customer response that this really may impact their customer loads, then maybe they'll return it.

We'll just have to see how BA processes the fall out from this.

p.s. My solution? Post a sign in the LGW lounge above the food counter filled with raw sausages: "easyJet passengers, please help yourself. Sincerely, Hiddy." That should end the problem!

Phil the Flyer

hfly - likewise (starting with post #649).

ThatT1Feeling

I didn't cancel a flight but I have purposely booked with another carrier next week just to use Open Doors at LGW.

Petty? Possibly. A financial loss to BA? Certainly.

It was only a £400 ticket of which maybe £250 was ticket cost (rather than charges etc), but it would have funded my OD usage for years if not decades.

NickB

I do not doubt for a second SRG's sincerity on this and that she genuinely believes this. What puzzles me, though, as I already posted above, is how one could possibly know that these people filling their bags with goodies are EZY flyers rather than BA flyers and wonder whether we are more inclined to believe this because we want to believe it.

The implication of the statement would be that GCHs are more prone to pilfering from BA lounges than SCHs. This is somewhat surprising and I would not have thought that either category would have any moral superiority to the other and be premised to be more honest than the other.

Tupelo

Since everyone, and I mean everyone, in this thread is absolutely convinced they know exactly how BA runs its branded lounges, I'll add my uneducated speculation dressed up as fact: In retail environments (such as airport shops and restaurants) the proprietor often pays the landlord a rental fee based on square footage leased AND a percentage of sales per square foot, all as part of the lease charges. Since BA really has no direct "sales" in its lounges, most certainly it pays a per-user fee in addition to rent in those locations where it doesn't own the real estate (such as everywhere it has a lounge.) I'm absolutely convinced this is true, because it's simply intuitive and everyone knows it.

HilFly

Delete - Duplicate.

hfly

I believe I was quite clear that I was referring to what she just posted at me in post #690 (which has now been removed), not what she posted about LGW (which incidentally was posted by 50 other people both before and after her post) nor her flip flopping on baggage charges years ago, nor the color of her shoes this morning for that matter. Both she and Hiddy know what I am referring to and does not need to be diluted nor morphed by others who want to try to prove some kind of other point (and which Hiddy has rectified)

hfly

Tupelo, that is simply not how own branded lounges work.

Schultzois

I'll be the first to say that although I don't know specifics of what BA negotiates with airports in which they operate a lounge, it's not so far out to think that even in lounges exclusively operated by BA, there may well be some relevant variables in the agreement with the airport for the space itself.

I've seen a number of commercial real estate leases, and one of the ways to figure out what the "value" to the tenant of the space being rented (when it's otherwise quite arbitrary) is to make a portion of the lease payment variable depending on the amount of some other activity going on that presumably makes the tenant money.

So, if I were a little airport not sure how much to charge BA for the space I rent them to set up a lounge, at least one lease proposal would probably include a charge per passenger using the facility on top of some fixed rent. I might even feel quite strongly that this should be a part of the deal, if I think that each passenger going into the lounge may in fact take revenue away from my other tenants in the terminal, making their space less lucrative...

All that's a way of saying that I wouldn't be so quick to conclude that, even in a BA-operated lounge, BA doesn't end up having to pay someone something each time a passenger uses their lounge. If I were running an airport, it's something I'd try to get, and for an Open Doors guest, BA doesn't really have any direct way to recuperate this, do they? Nevertheless, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they've also underestimated the cost of taking it away, once you account for diminished perception in the value of Gold (and less loyalty as a result), or, in my case, substituting just one "mostly-BA" itinerary, where I used Open Doors between outstations, with potentially an entirely non-BA itinerary if one of their competitors can look after me every leg along the way!

HilFly

I've just sent an email to BA thanking them for keeping the GCH riff raff out of Galleries Club lounges by ending the Open Doors policy.

Now that we've got rid of all those Eurocheat Golds and Goodwill volcano / strike golds there's room to move in here.......mmm, where's the fruitcake?.........

Schultzois

Looks like Tupelo gave a shorter version of of the same while I figured out how best to word my post above.

hfly, I have probably found myself in agreement with most of your comments on this (if not, necessarily, in agreement with the tone all the time), but do you have a reason for telling Tupelo point-blank that that is not how BA lounges work? As he posted that up, I was reaching the same conclusion myself, based on experience in other areas of commercial real estate... so I'd be surprised (but eager to know about) if there's a "BA Lounge Exception" that applies to airport commercial space lease agreements.