Iberia renovates Madrid VIP lounges to attract more Business customers

The renovations are part of the airline’s across-the-board client service improvement initiative, a mainstay of its strategic plan for 2009-2011, which calls for spending 150 million euros on a number of improvements, including those to the VIP lounges in key airports around the world.

Once again Iberia has turned to Spanish master chef Sergi Arola, winner of Michelin guide stars, to define a new line of food and beverage offerings, adapting them to the traffic and the time of day. The quality of the ingredients has been upgraded and the portions are significantly larger.

At all times of day visitors to Iberia’s Dalí, Goya, or Velázquez lounged in the T4 complex at Madrid-Barajas will find a buffet serving a wide variety of dishes, including breakfast rolls, sugar and chocolate doughnuts, omelettes and selections of sandwiches, salads, Panini, biscuits, fruit, ice cream, yoghurt, and coffee. In summertime the offering will include typical Spanish gazpacho. The Velázquez lounge, used by passengers taking intercontinental or long-haul flights, will also offer main dishes such as sirloin steak with caramelised apple, cod with Spanish ratatouille, sea bass with grilled vegetables or sauté quail, among many other choices.

Feng Shui design

The Chinese aesthetic philosophy of Feng Shui informed the redecoration of the three VIP lounges, which feature all new furnishings, draperies and floorings, and now exude an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity.

Bamboo wood brings positive energy to the spaces, which also feature mosses and river stones placed asymmetrically and in odd numbers, as well as two waterfalls in the Dalí lounge - for domestic and Schengen area passengers -. All this has made this space filled with equilibrium, harmony, and simplicity.

H-24

The Velázquez lounge in the T4 satellite building, for overseas and long-haul passengers, is now open 24/7, and accommodates transit passengers arriving in the early morning.

The “Velázquez Bistro” à la carte restaurant, with views of the runways, now boasts the new dishes defined by Sergi Arola, which vary with the passing seasons (Click here to see the menu).

This restaurant is the ideal spot to dine for passengers taking night flights to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo or Santiago de Chile. After dining in the lounge, they can spend their flights working or sleeping.

Remodelling of Iberia’s key lounges around the world

In addition to its Madrid VIP lounges, Iberia has also completed renovations in its lounges in the airports of Valencia and Bilbao in Spain, in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and in Frankfurt, Germany. Since its recent move to T3 at Heathrow, Iberia offers its businesses passengers the use of the Galleries Club Lounge, which it shares with its partners in the oneworld alliance operating in London. Over the next three years it will also renovate its lounges in Mexico City, São Paulo and Buenos Aires.







(c) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 22-Jul-09