Aspire Lounge at Manchester Airport (October '24)

Table of contents

• What is the Aspire Lounge?
• Entering The Lounge
• Peace and space in the lounge
• Food and Drink
• Cleanliness
• Summary

What is the Aspire Lounge?

The Aspire Lounge in Terminal 1 is part of a group of lounges over multiple airports not owned nor promoted by the airport. Independent lounges I would call them. You are free to pay and enter the lounge subject to their having space. I have previously reviewed the T1 Aspire Lounge but as this was our first visit in over a year and things were a lot different this time I wanted to refresh the review.

Entering The Lounge

This is where it all went downhill! Like all premium T1 lounges follow the signs as Escape, Aspire and Emirates lounges are all accessed from the first floor via stairs all lift and all very close together. I'd booked the lounge as part of a parking and lounge package with Holiday Extras, so I had a single booking reference that detailed the car parking. The lady on reception wasn't happy to accept this and repeatedly demanded a separate booking ID, which she couldn't find on the email on my phone as she refused to allow me to scroll down. Whilst dealing with me she paused twice to deal with customers queing behind me, which in both cases resulted in them being turned away as they hadn't booked and the lounge was full (more to come on that).

Luckily I had a 4 page (A4) print out of the email and on showing her the last part of page 4 she relucantly agreed to try the booking ID for the car park, telling me 'no way will this work', and of course it did.

Not a good start.

Peace and space in the lounge

Whilst we understand space at busy times is premium especially 15:30 on Saturday at the start of a half term, the lounge was extremely crowded. We just about found a space in the 'quiet' zone which suited us as 4 adults. The quiet zone is advertised as 16+ but there were several families there with noticeably younger children, but they probably couldn't find seats elsewhere.

Food and Drink

When we asked what they could do for a gluten free dietary requirement the initial offer was 'plain rice'. Not a good answer prior to a mid-haul flight! Back to reception where I rather loudly asked a different recepionist was that really the case after paying for 4 adults to enter, and 10 minutes later 2 covers-every-dietary-reguirement breakfast sausages and a bun arrived.

Food for the rest of us wasn't great and I could see why people were paying £8 for a small pizza (yes, you pay for pizza in this lounge). Our choice was the plain rice with some sort of curry or pasta. A few salad bits with cheese were available, make your own pancakes sometimes working mostly not, and a chocolate muffin as desert.

We also thought we'd treat ourselves to a beer, but the single draft beer wasn't working so there was a limited supply of bottles.

Cleanliness

After about an hour the 4 of us, 2 of which are big eaters and hadn't eaten for 7 hours, had a huge stack of plates, cuttlery and glasses. Suddenly 2 cleaners appeared and did start to blitz the tables, but in the past they have been very attentive and even a robot cleaner moving around to help the clearing.

Summary

The breakfast offering here is far better, we've already established that, but this afternoon session seemed to take them by surprise and they were constantly chasing their tails to keep up. We're back there in a few weeks, hopefully for a better experience.