Cathay Pacific has an arrival lounge at its Hong Kong International Airport hub. This is useful if you arrive on an early morning flight.
The lounge is located between the two terminals at Chek Lap Kok.
It’s reasonably easy to find provided you clear customs and follow the signs to Terminal 2. The lounge is located between the two terminals down some escalators. Just keep walking past the Plaza Premium Lounge and you’ll see it on the right.
To access the lounge you will need to have flown into Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific or Dragonair flight and have an invitation. You can find the rules for lounge admittance on the Cathay Pacific website
The first thing to say is that if you arrive in the morning, this lounge will be busy with people that have arrived early and have business in the city, or know their hotel won’t be ready for them until 3pm. Perhaps they messed up the booking, perhaps they didn’t want to pay for an extra night at the hotel or an early check-in (though note that the Regal Airport Hotel has 24-hour check-in, which gets around that).
If you want a shower, you will have to wait. When I arrived at 7am the showers were all occupied, and there was a queue of 14 people in front of me. This would be less of a problem if the rest of the lounge was large enough to accommodate all these people waiting, but it isn’t. It is a very small single room, with some showers off to one side.
There is a seating area around a large flat screen TV, and then behind a wall where the magazines are there are three or four tables for food, and then a buffet at the far end. That’s it. Don’t bother walking around looking for the rest of the lounge – you’ve found it and if you have luggage you’ll only clutter the place up worse. Most people seem to leave their bags close to the entrance because there isn’t space for them in the lounge. So ironically, although this isn’t a place to spend a long time – just grab a bite to eat and maybe shower, if you want a shower, you will be hanging around.
I would have taken some pictures in the lounge, but there were so many people in there it would not have been fair on the dishevelled people waiting to wash.
I put my name down on the list, had a small bowl of cereal and then left (I asked for my name to be removed from the list). The shower attendant apologised on the way out. I then walked across to the Premium Plaza lounge.
Lounge review: Plaza Premium Lounge (Arrival Hall) Hong Kong International
Verdict:
It’s a good idea having an arrivals lounge, but Cathay would need one twice the size (or possibly more) to service the amount of people who’d want to use it. I imagine anyone who has been there once would only go back if desperate, which keeps the numbers down.
See this link All Lounges Admittance rules on Cathay’s website for details of admittance.
