New Virgin to retain luxury Club lounges

Virgin Australia will retain its network of domestic lounges in its post-administration relaunch and could even keep its super-luxurious “The Club” to keep VIPs happy.

Virgin Australia will retain its major domestic lounges. Picture: Supplied.

Virgin Australia will retain its network of domestic lounges in its post-administration relaunch and could even keep its super-luxurious “The Club” to keep VIPs happy.

The equivalent of Qantas’ Chairman’s Lounge, created by former CEO John Borghetti, The Club is generally kept out of sight from Virgin travellers, other than a chosen few.

Although Bain Capital’s Michael Murphy previously indicated there was no justification for the indulgence in a leaner Virgin Australia, on Wednesday CEO Paul Scurrah was singing a different tune.

“People are not meant to know about The Club,” he joked when asked about the VIP lounge’s future.

“The only thing I will say about it is our customers, particularly our high-tiered customers want a differentiated level of service and we’re working through exactly how that will look once the demand comes back.”

Of the airline’s business lounges, chief customer officer Danielle Keighery said Virgin was committed to retaining the facilities at major domestic airports but reviewing others.

“We are looking at a number of the regional lounges which don’t get a large footprint,” said Ms Keighery.

“You certainly will see lounges across the main ports in the country.”

She said they would reopen when reasonable traffic began returning to airports.

“The Queensland borders shutting continues to have an ongoing impact on the demand and until we start to see the right numbers coming through the airport we will keep them closed,” Ms Keighery said.

A number of “product changes” on-board aircraft were in the pipeline based on customer feedback but were being kept under wraps for the time being.

“We will be focused on things we know the customer really cares about so we’re not ready to announce some of those changes yet but there will be changes,” said Ms Keighery.

At the same time, Virgin Australia was committed to delivering the “best value in the market” in an effort to lure price-conscious corporate travellers post-COVID-19.

“We know most people are focused on the price point and we will make sure that people feel our price point is as sharp as it possibly can be to attract leisure and corporate customers,” she said.

“We all know coming out of COVID every single business is going to be looking at value, where they can ensure costs remain low and we’re going to be the best value airline. That’s the positioning we’re taking, being the best value.”

In an effort to retain existing customers, Virgin Australia would extend the period to use travel credits issued in the place of cancelled flights, from mid-August until June 2023.

However the airline’s administrator Vaughan Strawbridge said they were not subject to the same rules as Qantas, to provide refunds to travellers instead of credits.

“What we didn’t want and Bain didn’t want was for those credits to become unsecured claims and then for those customers to receive a very small return on those credits,” Mr Strawbridge said.

“The intent is to provide value to those customer by giving them access to those credit so they can actually put them to use on future flights.”