Portal Lounge is a new independent Priority Pass lounge at Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport from the founders of Gameway. It’s part food and drinks and part gaming lounge, with a robotic bartender.
It’s located in terminal 1 (which serves most airlines, except for Sun Country, JetBlue and Southwest) at the intersection of the C and D concourses near the tram. It’s open daily 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. And you can get in with a Priority Pass card or pay $70.
Credit: Portal Lounge
The best thing is that this is treated like a lounge rather than an ‘experience’ so it’s valid regardless of who issued the Priority Pass card. (E.g. it’s listed on Amex’s lounge search for Platinum cardmembers.)
This is a small space at just 3,800 square feet, and about 600 square feet of it is dedicated to gaming. They advertise capacity for 114 guests but no lounge really uses every seat because it’s awkward to sit down in an empty seat with another group (and because people use chairs for their stuff as well).
Credit: Portal Lounge
Credit: Portal Lounge
The gaming area features 17 stations with Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, and custom-built gaming PCs (30 game titles total).
Credit: Portal Lounge
Credit: Portal Lounge
What’s great is that this is an actual lounge, not just a Gameway. Those are fine for what they are, video games and you get a snack and a drink, here’s the one by gate E16 at Dallas – Fort Worth.
But there’s real food and beverages here:
- customizable build-your-own bowls with options like butter lemon braised chicken and rice or tofu, fresh toppings including lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and beans, along with rotating seasonal sauces ranging from spicy to savory including Chipotle Crema, Tahini Harissa, and Sesame Soy Glaze.
- sliders, buffalo cauliflower, salads, sweets
- separate breakfast items
- cocktails, mocktails, and beer and wine
Credit: Portal Lounge
Their Italian-made robot bartender will work alongside human bartenders, with the robot apparently mixing the drinks and a human finishing service. It’s unclear how soon our new robot overlords will alter that arrangement. Will they take over the jobs completely? Or will we be serving them?
Credit: Portal Lounge
Digging a bit deeper into the proposal for the space, they expected a $3.1 million buildout of this small space, with a 10-year term, and crucially because Delta holds so much sway here they supported the concept.
Research was conducted on the number of Priority Pass members that travel through MSP and don’t use their benefits and staff is confident that the concept would capture a sizeable customer base through the program that is untapped today. Staff have also shared the concept with Delta and have garnered support.
Gameway is a joint venture partner with Airport Dimensions, whose parent company owns Priority Pass. The obvious goal is to get more Priority Pass swipes, which drives bank revenue for Collinson Group. I certainly expect they’ll have little trouble doing that. The problem is the number of customers with a Priority Pass trying to use such a small space. We’ll see!
It’s good to see more Priority Pass lounges domestically, so I wish them well. Not really a place for peace and quiet, probably.
Delta may be ok with this at MSP because it means some Amex card holders with Priority Pass will choose to go this to new lounge instead of filling up the Delta lounges at MSP as much.
And more likely that those with kids will shift to this lounge when having a choice between the MSP Delta lounges and this one.
Some gamers just want to play, but some are pretty particular about the titles and the equipment. The Gameway was fun! But when I went they had previous gen systems and you could only play the titles they offered you. For the PCs, would you be able to log into your Steam account and download your own games? I don’t see that happening for a few reasons.
Not knocking it though, cool idea!
After re-reading, looks like Gary answered it. Only preset titles. Too bad, but understandable!
MSP is awesome. The InterContinental connected to the terminal is one of the best airport hotels anywhere. The new SkyClub at G is like a D1 lounge. Sure, why not add a fun PP option, too!