Old Nov 5, 2015, 11:11 am
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: CPH-Flyer
READ BEFORE COMMENTING IF YOU ARE NEW,

Hamad International Airport (HIA) offers passengers a number of different lounges.

This thread, is specifically for the Al Safwa First Class Lounge. Information on the other Lounge options at HIA, can be found here.

Does Al Safwa have a web page?
Yes: http://www.qatarairways.com/global/e...-al-safwa.page

Dining Menu
https://www.qatarairways.com/content...-dining-en.pdf

Where can I find Al Safwa Lounge?
The Lounge is located on Level 3 of the airport.

Can I use the Qatar Airways Al Safwa Lounge?

Access is based on your underlying fare bucket. This means that upgraded tickets, maybe except upgrades with QPoints (see post 2735), are not granted access.

Access is thus restricted to Qatar Airways First Class, and OneWorld First Class passengers :
- either holding a First Class boarding pass* for their next flight
- or holding a First Class boarding pass from their previous flight.

Additionally, Privilege Club platinum club travelling on any business-class fare are welcomed into the lounge. This is a facility introduced recently and one that could just as easily disappear.

- Guests are not permitted.
* Operational Upgrades to First do not give access. Upgrades with Qpoints may do give acces (see post 2735 - Sept 2022)

Arrival access on mid and long haul? (eg. coming from LHR in F)

YES

​​​​​
Ex. CAI-DOH-HEL
Arrival access regional F? (eg. coming from CAI in F)

Yes.
Caveat, if your underlying J fare is P, then the no lounge access for business light kicks in. And there is no access.

Privilege Club Platinum members are currently allowed in the lounge when travelling on any QR business-class fare: that could change. Other Oneworld Emerald members are directed to the Platinum lounge(s) when travelling in any class, and the Al Mourjan lounge when travelling on relevant business-class fares. Yup, it gets complicated.

What does the lounge look like?
Reports on the Lounge, can be found here and here. Photographs of the lounge, can be found here.

Is there a Spa?
Yes, there is a full Spa, but you will have to pay for treatments. A full list of treatments available can be found here

What about the sleeping rooms?
Stargold in http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/28199729-post1177.html suggests that access to sleeping rooms is as follows:
'* No reservations allowed - always first-come first-served
* Only available if the remaining time until the flight departure is more than 4 hours
* Passengers are allowed maximum six hours' usage - for any further usage, a fee of QAR 450 is payable for a second block of six hours.
* No F&B of any kind except bottled water in the sleeping rooms.'


What changes can I expect during Ramadan?
Ramadan affects QR and you in many ways so please look at ramadan to see how you are affected.

Updated: 19/11/2023


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QR Al Safwa First Class Lounge

Old Oct 22, 2015, 4:42 am
  #61  
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Originally Posted by N1Rotate
CX/BA/QF have different types of travellers than QR. First of all they have a much higher percentage of higher yielding O&D travellers.

The branding of the regional F is more to do with the local Qatari market, DOH-DXB-DOH fares in F are around $1350 or around US$ 1.80 per kilometre while you can book on QR.com a MUC-DOH-MEL-DOH-MUC fare in J (was able to price that for Mar 2016) for $2050 or $0.06 per km (That is less than European LCC average fares in economy on a per kilometre basis - not a fair comparison but just contextualises how cheap some of QR's premium fares are) or F class BKK-DOH-LHR-DOH-BKK for $2200 (US$0.10 per kilometre).

Not only are these passengers contributing much more revenue proportionally, they also cost less as the distribution costs are lower (e.g. no commissions in Qatar, while other markets rely on high TA commissions and consolidators) and the taxes on the airfares are lower. They also cost less because they use higher density seating, e.g. an A320 regional F seat takes the space of 2 Y seats while an A380 F seat takes the space of 6 Y seats.

To put things in perspective, 12 O&D pax in first will turn a profit on an A320 (roughly $10000 to 12000 all-in operating cost for an A320 DOH-DXB-DOH) without selling any other seat in Economy or any cargo, while if you fill a 777 with only connecting pax from the US with the typical fares the flight will be loss making even at 100% load factors.

What you label as the "Fake F" fliers are the actually the highest spending core frequent fliers for QR, as that is where the higher number of O&D premium passengers are. While the number of these fliers are small, they contribute a much higher share of revenue proportionally. These are the same passengers that book US$8000 fares to LHR/CDG on the same seats that would be sold for about $1100 (if you divide the $2200 for LHR-DOH-BKK equally). So it makes sense for QR to value them.

Not only is this market less price sensitive, the lounge is a much more important part of the product experience as in many cases more time would be spent in the lounge than in the flight itself. Also this adds more differentiation between regional Y and F to incentivise people to pay the difference between regional Y and F. A typical regional F fare for DOH-DXB-DOH is 8-9 times a typical economy fare on the same route, while your long haul J connecting pax will only pay around 3-4 times the economy price and get a much bigger product differentiation over all. On the other hand most of QR's long haul J class market is price sensitive and the lounge is much less of a factor in the decision making, and Al-Mourjan may not be the best but it certainly is very competitive when looking at other J lounges in the market place.
Now this sounds great on the forum as a read with bells and whistles, it makes very little sense. Each passenger pays a different price for his or her seat, by your logic each should get different level of service so economy O should buy own fried rice..while economy M will get a choice of mains or alcoholic beverages. Where does this stop. It doesn't and it dilutes the concept of frequent flying and alliances.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 5:02 am
  #62  
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Originally Posted by ashkale
Now this sounds great on the forum as a read with bells and whistles, it makes very little sense. Each passenger pays a different price for his or her seat, by your logic each should get different level of service so economy O should buy own fried rice..while economy M will get a choice of mains or alcoholic beverages. Where does this stop. It doesn't and it dilutes the concept of frequent flying and alliances.
I think the main point of N1Rotate's post was to counter YouGeeElWhy's comment that the intra-Middle east flyers are "Fake F Flyers" and getting top lounge access, when people are dropping lots of money on long-haul J and not getting a better lounge. His counter-point was technically on a lot of intra-Middle east routes First is vastly more expensive per KM than long-haul (Imagine paying $1200 for London to Paris RT).

I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong) he was commenting on the lack of overall access to One-World Elites in both the first and business class lounges.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 5:25 am
  #63  
 
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Originally Posted by Lan44
Yeah, we need pics. After all some staff were saying the lounge was already open two days ago.
Hold your horses, my HND-DOH flight leaves in 4 hours, though knowing FT, in the 4+11 hours flying time, someone will confirm before me

(and I can only confirm the outside, not the inside)
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 5:32 am
  #64  
 
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Originally Posted by mpkz
Hold your horses, my HND-DOH flight leaves in 4 hours, though knowing FT, in the 4+11 hours flying time, someone will confirm before me

(and I can only confirm the outside, not the inside)
Go mpkz, go!
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 6:03 am
  #65  
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We patiently wait....well maybe not so patient....
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 6:08 am
  #66  
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Originally Posted by ashkale
Now this sounds great on the forum as a read with bells and whistles, it makes very little sense. Each passenger pays a different price for his or her seat, by your logic each should get different level of service so economy O should buy own fried rice..while economy M will get a choice of mains or alcoholic beverages. Where does this stop. It doesn't and it dilutes the concept of frequent flying and alliances.
I don't see how that made "little" sense. N1Rotate was trying to illustrate that pax who are flying intra-middle east in first class aren't "fake F fliers".

Last edited by HB7; Oct 22, 2015 at 6:13 am Reason: Accidentally typed wrong word
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 6:14 am
  #67  
 
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What the hell is a "Fake F" flyer, anyway?

QR are selling it as F, people are buying it as F, and QR is delivering F services. Sounds very much "real" to me.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 6:28 am
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Originally Posted by stargold
What the hell is a "Fake F" flyer, anyway?
This is what a "Fake F" seat looks like ;-)

https://static1.businessinsider.com/...irst-class.jpg
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 6:57 am
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Regarding the origin of the regional F, it is not a US influenced thing but rather historically in the Gulf upto the early 2000s regional F was common. KU and GF even operated 3-class A320 with a regional Business Class (2-3 seats) slotting in between the regional F and Y. Also worth noting that in Qatar the government and government related entities travel policies allow regional F for relatively junior staff.

ashkale,

I was not referring to fare classes or the variation of fares and revenue management. I was commenting that QR's passenger profile is different than that of CX/BA/QF. QR relies on connecting passengers much more than the aforementioned carriers and therefore commands lower yields in general and that these "Fake F" passengers earn QR proportionally much higher revenues, so it makes sense for QR to value them and saying that QR's typical long haul business travellers are paying $4000 to $6000 is not an accurate observation because most of QR's premium pax are connecting and paying much lower fares.

One final note, QR is taking into account the needs of OWE/OWS pax in Y with the future expansion plans so its not like QR doesn't care about this segment at all. Anyways I don't want to go on too off topic, I hope we get back to the subject of the Al-Safwa.

Last edited by N1Rotate; Oct 22, 2015 at 7:03 am Reason: Going off topic and returning to topic.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 7:48 am
  #70  
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I think we are all falling into the same trap as usual.

Lets just wait for the Al Safwa to formally open before we start worrying about when it will open, what the rules will be for access, etc.

I appreciate we love to speculate (myself certainly included), but QR have shown us that we have to wait...unfortunately!
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 8:02 am
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It's all up to you mpkz! You're our only hope.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 8:23 am
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Originally Posted by msm2000uk
I think we are all falling into the same trap as usual.

Lets just wait for the Al Safwa to formally open before we start worrying about when it will open, what the rules will be for access, etc.

I appreciate we love to speculate (myself certainly included), but QR have shown us that we have to wait...unfortunately!
I understand your point, and I'm the first person to put the speculation in context and not get carried away (I've given up on EY F lounge altogether), but to my mind there is a clear difference between

(i) "soon", "very soon", "later this year", "sometime next month", "in a few week's time" etc etc; and
(ii) "it's open today"

Since the latter is a statement of fact, rather than speculation or opinion as to future occurrence, I'm more inclined to give credence to it. However, I suppose I still come back to your point, and say - I'll believe it when I see it.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 9:27 am
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Originally Posted by stargold
Quote:





Originally Posted by msm2000uk



I appreciate we love to speculate (myself certainly included), but QR
I understand your point, and I'm the first person to put the speculation in context and not get carried away (I've given up on EY F lounge altogether), but to my mind there is a clear difference between

(i) "soon", "very soon", "later this year", "sometime next month", "in a few week's time" etc etc; and
(ii) "it's open today"

Since the latter is a statement of fact, rather than speculation or opinion as to future occurrence, I'm more inclined to give credence to it. However, I suppose I still come back to your point, and say - I'll believe it when I see it.
I hope this ( if this turns out to be true ) forces EY into quick action as well.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 11:36 am
  #74  
 
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Its open! Confirmed; I just called them. I might book a ticket to Dubai to reconfirm.
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Old Oct 22, 2015, 11:41 am
  #75  
 
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Originally Posted by QatarA340
Its open! Confirmed; I just called them. I might book a ticket to Dubai to reconfirm.
I mean to be fair, if it's open I'm surprised no one has any pics yet. I'm not there till next month so if it is, fantastic.
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