Al Safwa - Underwhelming
 

Today I had my first visit to this lounge. I had high expectations but soon found that while the lounge is generally quiet and very large... it is disappointing.

A few items.

- Limited self service items
- No drinks allowed in business center
- Restaurant - limited menu

Emirates is so much better.

The Qataris lack details. But at least they invested their oil money somewhere, unlike my country, oil wells almost dry up and yet nothing done.

A lot of these are personal preference, I suppose. No drinks allowed in the business centre is a little bit anal but not a ridiculous rule, IMO. Regarding limited self-service items I would prefer Al Safwa to be 100% made-to-order high quality items (if you want self-service, you can go to Al Mourjan, rather like the BA CCR/GF divide at LHR). The restaurant menu is not extensive but isn't *that* limited, my main gripe is the quality of food rather than the selection, would rather they just had a few extremely high quality food items instead.

Having said that, Al Safwa could indeed fairly easily be better - in many ways I think the CDG and LHR lounges are actually nicer places to spend time.

Technically the OWE lounge is called "First", though that would be seriously insulting to the CCR.

Fair questions Phil! ^

Lol horses for courses I suppose.
For me, comparing Al-Safwa to EK DXB F lounge is like comparing the heavens to the earth lol.
The aesthetics and design of Al-Safwa is amazing and much more interesting compared to the massive monotonous space that the EK DXB F lounge sits in.
And as for the sleeper rooms, well there is no comparison.
And the degree of exclusivity, which is what F flyers want, also no comparison.

Yes, I agree. F & B is only one element of a decent lounge experience - Al Safwa scores highly for me on Exclusivity, Quiet, Design & Ambience.

EK F lounge scores on F & B. Thats it. The rest of the lounge = dated & drab.

While the design of the EK F Lounges is terribly dull, albeit quite typical for the culture (lots of seated areas), the food absolutely blows The Al Safwa out the water.

As a result, and because I usually only have a 2 hour layover, I'm quite content in the EK F spaces.

For any longer though, the Al Safwa and sleeping rooms are the winner.

M

I agree that the food is much better in EK F lounges, as I said, but having said that I have had pretty decent food in Al Safwa too. If I was choosing only one of the two? I would choose Al Safwa above EK F in a heart beat bt then again, I would choose QR above EK in a heart beat too.

The reason I raise the subject of DXB flight congestion is that a few years ago my son was flying QR J ARN DOH DXB (in the days before the UAE threw their toys out of the pram). As I invariably do I was tracking his progress on FR24. His ARN DOH flight landed, without delay, at approx 2300hrs. His DOH DXB flight (< 250 miles) departed DOH just after midnight and made its way towards DXB, however the aircraft made no fewer than five circuits of a holding pattern offshore before being able to land at DXB - it appears that many other aircraft suffered similar holding pattern delays. What could/should have been a 30-45 minute flight turned into 75+ minutes in the air.

I must admit I was also quite disappointed by the AS. There is no denying that it is an absolutely stunning lounge from a design and architecture point of view, and it is nice to have the sleeping rooms when available. However, I just didn't think it was comfortable, it was awkwardly quiet and I found the food to be meh.

Admittedly, there are few first class lounges to compare to the likes of the CX lounges in HKG, but I just didn't enjoy the AS.

On reflection, the fact that it was Ramadan and there was not alcohol may have affected my perception of the lounge.....