On my way back to Perth from Melbourne, we checked out the Qantas Domestic Business Lounge in Melbourne Airport. I’ve been here a handful of times and it has a similar modern interior design to the Perth Qantas Domestic Business Lounge. Like the last lounge review, this is an experiential review of the lounge in Melbourne. The Melbourne lounge is dubbed one of Australia’s best domestic lounges. Did it stand up to that nickname? lets see!
Entry and seating
The Qantas Domestic Business Lounge is located just off to the side after you get through security at the airport. You take a long escalator up to the entrance of the lounge. And it’s a massive lounge. Given what a busy airport Melbourne would be, the lounge offered plenty of seating options. You can also catch a pretty good view of the airport from it’s massive glass windows all around the lounge. We were hanging out at the Lounge from around 4pm so we experienced the warm afternoon sun streaming into the lounge around.
You have a large range of seating choices throughout the lounge. You can find a quiet corner or you can be in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the lounge. For this visit we chose to sit at the bar tables and stools near the noodle bar (more on that shortly)!
Food and beverages in the lounge
The food and drinks are locate around one central hub. You have a large rectangular drinks and coffee bar in the middle of the lounge. It was one of the busier areas of the lounge with patrons constantly going back and forth for drinks. You had a range of beverage choices here. Freshly brewed coffee and tea. Tap beer, bottled wines, softdrinks, juice, spirits. The range of drinks available was definitely much larger than the Perth lounge. We once again kicked off our lounge experience with a G&T before trying out a few of the food options
Next to the bar was the hub for food. There were three distinct areas. On the left handside you had the area for soups and hot food. The soup for the night was quite nice, Carrot & Coconut Soup. In the middle was my favourite Spice Bar where they served up freshed cooked noodle soups. There were two soups on offer that particular evening. I thought the curry laksa soup was delicious. The wonton noodle soup I could have given a miss. On the right handside was where you could make a salad, sandwich or pick up some sweet desserts to finish off your meal.
As we were in for a long journey through planes and airports (we were flying back to Perth via Sydney as prices of direct Melbourne to Perth flights were somewhat exorbitant at the time), we loaded up on coffee before we headed off to our Perth to Sydney flight.
Service and Lounge Amenities
The usual amenities were available in the lounge. Plenty of working spaces and power points for business travellers. The bathrooms were modern and beautiful. WiFi was of course available to all patrons and was fast for general usage. Even though the lounge was extremely busy, especially with business travellers, the speed of the service (e.g. cleaning tables, refilling food, providing you drinks) was quite fast.
Next up, I will be sharing my experience flying Sydney to Perth in business class on the A320-200 using points. I’ve only flown business class on a handful of flights (all were on point redemption except one, where it was a free and unexpected upgrade by the airline). It was interesting to compare flying pre- and post-pandemic, there are definitely differences on what the airlines offer.
Thanks for stopping by today and happy shooting.
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