Airport lounges used to be the domain of business travelers, with bars and business centers. But the face of travel, and premium travel, has changed. There’s far more premium leisure than there used to be and lounges frequently cater to families.
Sometimes it seems like club lounges are really just daycare centers? They’re contained areas with easy access to bathrooms where parents can sit. Kids run amok. And customers expecting the traditional notion of lounge run headlong into this new model.
The value proposition of an Airport Lounge goes up 10x when you have kids:
▫️The area is contained
▫️Large seating options
▫️Bathrooms always nearby
▫️Kids love bottomless juice and don’t mind the meh spread (stale bread, half-melted cheese, cafeteria cold cuts)Conversely,… pic.twitter.com/VhMrkwVmnq
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) July 16, 2024
Some lounges have dedicated family rooms and those should really be used for their intended purpose!
It’s a mistake, though, to blame the kids for creating disturbance. It’s the parents, how they parent, and what they teach. Like the family who left this mess behind:
One comment and a response stood out to me: “Money can’t buy class” followed by “No, but money can buy you an overpriced credit card and access to a cafeteria food buffet.”
With the glasses left on the wooden ledge behind the booth, it’s clear that mom and dad were drinking not parenting. Some children behave well in lounges, and many adults do not.
Here’s a grown man with his feet on the furniture of a United Club in front of a sign that says not to put your feet on the furniture.
Credit: Ari
If a lounge were to impose “adults only” rules then perhaps passengers should have to test in as “adults.”
Raise the guest price and apply fees to ALL children. $75 apiece. Any alcoholic will gladly pay this price.
Drinking and good parenting don’t mix. At least without a sober nanny willing to keep both parents and children in line.
My favorite is when a lounge has a playground for the brats that never gets used.
Hell is other people’s children. I don’t mind well-behaved children anywhere I care to visit. It’s actually a pleasant surprise to at least see part of the next generation being raised properly. I’ve been in top end restaurants around the world and seen even young children enjoying dinner with a parent or parents and siblings and not having to have soda and chicken fingers and fries. My kids were raised to behave appropriately for the situation. But the recent trend in “gentle parenting” is creating monsters. You aren’t doing the child any favors by never telling them “No!” and that not every establishment is a playground or frat party.
Interestingly, neither of my adult children currently has children but plan on having them. We were all recently in attendence with a gently-raised child in the 7 to 9 year old range. My kids were shocked how badly behaved they were. One commented, “Well, now I know what not to do.”
The BA LHR T5 kids lounge inside the Club World lounge — in the lounge to the left after clearing the main security screening checkpoint — seems to be less used than it used to be. I think it’s a function of way more kids nowadays being given the electronic drug in the form of things like iPads and smartphones.
The ORD Admirals Club lounge between the H-K piers has a much bigger kids lounge but it’s usually very underutilized space when I am around.
But most airline lounges and most other airport lounges have no dedicated space for kids.
Gary – you sound more and more like a “get off my lawn” old codger every day. Also the level of your entitlement knows no bounds. Very sad and pathetic
Signs, admonitions, etc are meaningless to these people. They simply don’t care how they affect other people. The only respond to punitive measures, I.e. enforcement.
No endorsement = no change in behavior = poor experiences for the majority.
Former “social norms” are out.
I have seen adults removed from the lounge for far less egregious behavior of a child. Why can’t the lounge staff enforce the rules regarding social behavior and help to keep their lounge restful, safe, and just generally a pleasant place to go?
They seem particularly uninterested in dealing with the children/parents from foreign countries.
The lounge experience has gone to crap and primarily due to children being present.
I want to highlight the experience of waiting to enter the Centurion Lounge in Dallas (DFW). The lounge was overcrowded, and most AMEX cardholders had to wait 30 minutes to enter. What caught my attention was that Centurion card (black card) members with their kids can cut and bypass the line ahead of less valued Platinum AMEX cardholders.
Depending on the time of day, the experience is chaotic once inside. Families with two to five kids crowded the food line and the bar area to order random soft drinks. As the Centurion Lounge playroom area was too small to accommodate all the children, kids spilled into the lounge and started running disruptively. A parent asked me if there was a less crowded airport play area for their kids. I recommended visiting the complimentary dog relief areas in the DFW Airport terminals because their kids might have the opportunity to play with puppies. This experience made me appreciate the privilege of paying an annual fee of $695 US for my platinum AMEX card.
@AC a review of your daily whines here makes this comment pretty ironic
Sadly this is the low level to which the traveling public, generally, has become. Traveling from LAX-EWR a couple of weeks ago, a family actually set up a tent in the lounge for their kids, although in all fairness, they we’re not disruptive outside of taking up quite a bit of space in the lounge. On my return flight a couple of days ago we had the tale of two cities up front – we had a mother and young child (5 or 6) sitting right behind us in 1st that was the best-behaved child I have experienced on a flight in quite some time, quiet, polite to the flight attendants and well mannered. A couple of the other passengers even commented to the mother upon departure. Contrast this with the couple and their four children in the first row and sitting across from us in the second who were constantly jumping up and down, were talking loudly, one kid who kept opening and closing their window shade and changing seats during the flight. While I’m not yet willing to spend the money to fly private, I certainly can understand why people do – it’s become a crap shoot to fly commercial today…
C_M my compliments for the Satre reference. People bash Boomers; we never let our kids act this way.
Especially during summer holidays, airline lounges are a complete disaster. Kids running around and screaming with parents not giving a shit. It is impossible to work. Airlines should not allow for one frequent flyer to take his/her whole damn family into a BUSINESS lounge.
Warning: My youngest 2 kids will be with me at the AUS AA lounge on Wednesday morning…
They’ll be the ones watching their tablets…
When they start kicking out speakerphone shitheads, zoom zeros and YouTube yahoos, then I’ll be fine with noise rules applying to kids.
AC provides the real whines around here when trying to dictate what gets discussed by Señor Leff on Señor Leff’s blog.. AC is so vested in being an apologist for travel service providers that any indication of not being entirely bought by an airline or hotel could be triggering to AC.
I can understand why a lot of travelers would be frustrated by the actions of some kids in lounges, but I honestly can’t really see that really changing at all because most travelers and airport staff have their own families and they aren’t always gonna waste there time in trying to enforce rules in an airport that are Un-enforcable, unless you wanna deal with parental backlash
@Dave W.
Boomer parents raised me better but they let their grandkids get away with murder. “Aren’t your nieces and nephews cute?” “No, they’re not. They need to shut up and sit down.”
Those under, say, 12, should not be allowed in airport lounges.
Parenting has declined as expectations of behavior have. The kids in the lounges today will be worse parents tomorrow as far as decorum. Airlines need to develop club offerings like seat class. There also be behavior guiderails. The parents on vacay letting kids run wild would never do that that their Rye Country Club or Dairen CT Club.
Airport lounges are overrated. I did have a good experience in the BA LHR First Wing Lounge, once I found the nook on the other side of the toilets with the high table top with power outlets suitable for outlets. I actuallyy heard three business men on cellphones actually disclosing business. The rest of the lounge was amok with rampant children and posing influencers
Have a ‘families’ section and an ‘adults only’ section. Anyone with kids under 16 is not admitted to the ‘adults only’ area. Simple.
As a childless and presently catless lady, who also has no need to travel with fake ‘emotional support’ animals, I’d be good with a section for just us. No kids, no pets, no speakerphones, and no feet on the furniture. I’m willing to bet there’d be a line to get in.
@Joyce,
I would be the next in line, and promise to leave my emotional support ostrich at home….
@ Joyce & David. I will be right behind you. And yes I could easily be considered a “keep off my grass old codger” because I am. I raised my children to know “restaurant” and “playground” behavior and I do not consider it asking too much of parents to be parents. Supervising your children is part of being a parent and it’s an honor that should not be left for someone else to do. I guarantee it will not be administered with the LOVE like that of a responsible parent.
Five years ago, at the Bangkok airport lounge used by China Eastern, I saw a young Indian boy, maybe 5, kneading with both hands the pineapple slices of the buffet ,in full view of the employees, and I made a remark to him : his mother heard me, called her husband who started yelling at me, mad as a dog, just about to punch me in the face.. No one intervened. The Child King.
The earth is already overpopulated and it is causing the global warming – stop breeding!
“The Child King” is spot on. And the Karen mother and the simp husband. And staff whose hands are tied and mouths masked. Disgusting