I made my peace with creaming kids years ago! Front flying Economy to Business class. All you can do is pout and complain and watch it ruin your day/flight.
Its one thing for screaming and running around kids. Its another for baby crying (not big kids) for me anyways.

I don't think Lounge are called Executive :) its Club Lounge. I don't see this being different from Airline Lounges. If you want to conduct your "business" they have rooms for that. People pay for it one way or the other, even with Elite Airline status its "free".

I've been to lounges where there are a group of "business men" are just talking loudly. This is just as bad.

The way I see it if the kids start crying or running around then they should be asked to leave.

The IC Hotel Lounges are more for if you want access you pay for it, for us RAs we are spoiled to get "free" access but the fact its not part of the official RA benefit. Some/most of them are paying guests. Of course lots of spoiled kids will be around there too! Seen this in Vienna, Frankfurt, Toronto and Paris.

You want quiet time stay in your room or the business centers. I know I have had conference calls and I prefer to be in my room doing that.

How about flying Business/First Class, its "business" you pay for more space and "quiet" do you want to start a petition to not allow kids in that class? Imagine flying 8-16 hours with a screaming kid?
Lots of people have money especially those Oil barons! They most likely don't care.

Unfortunately kids take over hotel business centers and play noisy computer games there for hours. It's only the ones that provide expensive "secretarial services" and not computers for guests to use that tend to be quiet.

I primarily try to book hotels with lounges when i travel with kids and pay extra if i dont have access due to status etc.

It is much easier to grab a quick snack there both for myself and kids. I am ok witn some timeframe designated as kid free - 5-6 cocktails or smth.

The issue of behavior is a different one and not limited to kids - you really should approach hotel management to empower lounge employees to enforce proper behavior. An obnoxious fellow yapping loudly for 20 min on his phone at conrad hkg was far more annoying than any families there. When i complained to attendant she suggested i moved to another table...:rolleyes:

Nobody says noisy businessmen are better than noisy children in club lounges. We just say that it is easy to understand that customers who pay for club lounge do not want necessarily have the feeling to be in a noisy business meetin g/ crowded pub / kindergarten.

At some properties, it is so obvious that rules are followed strictly with no restriction (certainly because it is perceived as a major disturbance and/or it is easier to manage than asking afterwards someone to leave the lounge).

Same story at some airlines business lounges (I can clearly remember Air France staff asking some German passenger at Sao Paulo lounge making loudly a phone call with Skype to stop his conversation or leaving the lounge; and at JFK a family being asked to leave the lounge because of the noise made by the children, which did not seem to be a problem for the parents).

On the plane, FA can take action if passengers disturb the others. With young kids crying, it is of course a different case as noone can obviously blame a baby crying, even if - and I experienced that on a long haul fligh in J - it can be very painful).

I think you have summed it up well.

In essence with noisy adults, the adults can be held directly responsible for their own behaviour and there are some options open to other adults. With kids, the attitude is the opposite and that it is kids being kids and the onus is transferred onto everyone else to simply have to compromise their desire for peace to the childrens needs to be kids and be noisy. This is made worst now because over time parenting has become less concerned about the discomfort of others. There is no other solution to that conundrum. The conclusion therefore of allowing adults wanting better odds of a more serene adult environment is to allow that occaisional sanctuary for which you pay a premium. I think that seems reasonable to most reasonable people. The idea that kids should be allowed anywhere and everywhere isn't a human rights freedom issue.

I think those that make the arguments that there are other and equal forms of annoyance are obviously correct but it simply fails to confront this one.

:)

^

Agreed. If you pay the price for a room that includes club access, or get it for "free" due to your status (in which case you're still paying, just with loyalty), you should be able to expect that you can go in, and enjoy a quiet, relaxing setting away from the hotel proper. And honestly, I'd be just as upset if it was a businessman or etc causing the commotion. You should be able to go and relax and lounge, not deal with whiny brats - whether the brat is a spoiled businessman or a spoiled child is irrelevant.

And it's unfair to tell the kid "hey, I know you just want to play, and I know there's more than likely a pool just downstairs you'd love to be swimming in, but right now I want you to sit here quietly so as to not disturb other guests."

Let the kid be a kid... somewhere else.

One of the reasons we pay for club access is so that we have a haven that is mostly away from children (especially in the early evening). I am not particularly kid friendly admittedly, but I would have no problem with well behaved children in the lounge. But there needs to be a point when the people that are in charge of the lounge will say enough if behaviour starts to get whiny, loud, obnoxious, and this applies to the adults as well. It drives me crazy when people Skype in the lounge, really... you've got a room to do that in in private! As always, I think the main issue is just about people showing consideration for other people.

Exactly.

The other essential difference between noisy adults and noisy children is that even though none of us welcome these confrontations we all have the option of approaching a noisy adult and request that they quieten down. Society now mandates that we cannot approach minors directly and have these exchanges directly with them. We are then confronted with having to confront the parents or in some cases nannies of the noisy children who have already by this stage witnessed the behaviour but concluded other people's discomfort is inconsequential against the need of their kids right to free expression.

Kid-free areas are a response essentially to these adults as much as their kids.

:)

Do you guys know about many ICH hotels with kids-free club lounge? For family holidays it would be good to know in advance...

I don't think I've ever encountered one, but of course I'm not always traveling with my kids.

It's difficult one tbh as probably 80-90% of kids that are in lounges are well behaved and are absolutely no problem.

Personally I'd have a minimum age of 12 at any lounge after 5pm. Anyone wanting access with kids after that time give them a bottle of wine/some beers and crisps and send them back to the room with their little cherubs.

The other option is to empower the dragons and ensure they deal with noise issues as and when they happen

Indeed. If the hotel staff are just empowered to deal with noisy kids and noisy adults it would solve a lot of problems. I do notice more hotels seem to print a dress policy for the lounges but don't always enforce it. I also observed a hotel lounge in Japan a couple of weeks ago with a no Skype, no mobile policy but sure enough someone was ignoring it and no one did anything about it.
In the same lounge, a family told their children that if they didn't behave they would have to leave. I wanted to say well done to Mum and Dad for respecting other people. The kids, not surprisingly behaved perfectly.

Now this I 100% agree with you :)

I personally I have no "problems" with babies crying BUT I do have problems with kids running around wild while the parents are letting them do that.

While 'It's always school holidays somewhere' isn't quite true, I live just north of a family-oriented American beach town. They actually publish regional spring break schedules by school district in the local fishwrapper, so I've seen how the spring break season runs from about Mardi Gras weekend and/or February 15 through about April 10, there's a bit of a pause, and then summer beach season goes from about May 15 through the Labor Day holiday in early September, and then there's about a week at Thanksgiving and another 10 or so days at Christmas to New Year's that can be called school holiday again.

So you're talking about half the year as someone's school holiday and so using that as some sort of marker for kids in the lounge is kind of unworkable for practical purposes. And there are a couple of places along the beach where there's a good amount of overlap between the business and vacation crowds.

The empowerment thing is a great notion theoretically but in practice with a chain of command of varying quality above, very few of what will be relatively lowly paid, and with so many places having part time or students as part of hospitality college ... very few will actually want to intercede either through lack of training, confidence, experience etc. It takes a lot of personal skills experience and absolute confidence that when a high spending customer does complain that all of your line of management above will thank you for it. The complainer will make a lot of stuff about rudeness, "we're never coming back" etc. It makes more sense from their point of view therefore to steer clear and "not notice".

The only viable practical solution is to have a clear kids or no kids policy.