SWISS has opened three new facilities at its Zurich Airport hub including a new airside First Class Lounge, which offers its guests more comfort and far greater privacy. The new landside airport ticket office and the enlarged and redesigned First Class check-in lounge should also help further enhance customers’ air travel experience.

SWISS continues to invest substantial funds in revamping and expanding its airport lounge facilities. Having opened new lounges at Geneva and New York JFK, SWISS has now turned its attention to its Zurich Airport hub: for some weeks now, First Class customers and HON Circle members have been taking advantage of a new airside First Class Lounge.

The new lounge has been specifically designed to offer maximum privacy to guests, and features separable VIP areas, business offices with state-of-the-art laptops (including free internet connections) and dayrooms with showers, so that visitors can work undisturbed or simply rest and relax. With its large library, its TV area and its wide selection of international newspapers, the lounge features extensive entertainment options, too.

 

The spacious 650-square-metre lounge also offers much-enhanced comfort - the furniture is provided by the exclusive Vitra company - and further-extended service. The latter now includes an attractive pre-flight dining option with a selection of international and Swiss dishes such as “Charninia Engiadinaisa”, diced veal in a creamy thyme-and-mushroom sauce with polenta bramata and seasonal vegetables. The new lounge boasts an attractive new décor, too, with the walls, which are made from over ten tonnes of Jurassic limestone, a particularly pleasing “Swiss” touch.

 

 

To help ensure that its First Class customers can spend as much time as possible in the new lounge before their flight, SWISS has also enlarged its First Class check-in zone, a move that should significantly speed up the check-in process. The new First Class Check-in Lounge offers guests additional check-in desks in an area that is physically separated from the rest of the check-in concourse. In addition to an appealing new design based on an aircraft fuselage, SWISS First Class customers can also look forward to exclusive check-in service and comfortable seating in the new facility.   

 

Another addition to the Zurich check-in concourse is the new state-of-the-art Airport Ticket Office, which has also been substantially enlarged from its predecessor and is available to all SWISS customers. The new Office’s physical separation from the Business and Economy Class check-in desks should help enhance the ticketing services offered. And in a further innovation, Lufthansa is represented in the new Airport Ticket Office with its own dedicated desks. 

 

The new facilities at Zurich Airport mark a further step in SWISS’s ongoing endeavours to expand and enhance its ground product and services. “Our customers’ journey begins well before takeoff,” explains CEO Christoph Franz, “and that’s why we also offer them top quality on the ground.” Two more facilities - a new Miles & More Senator Lounge and a new Business Class Lounge - will open their doors at Zurich Airport in the first half of 2008. When they do, SWISS will have a unique 3 000-square-metre lounge complex in which to make its customers feel totally at home.   

 

 

Needless to say, SWISS is equally committed to steadily enhancing its inflight products and services. Recent innovations here have included the addition of Balik salmon and a wide selection of exclusive cheeses to the range of First Class fare. The culinary additions complement SWISS’s attractive ongoing “SWISS Taste of Switzerland” inflight catering concept. In Business Class, meanwhile, customers will be able to compile their own breakfast on long-haul services from March onwards.

 

On the entertainment front, too, SWISS continues to expand its inflight selection. First Class travellers now enjoy a wider choice of magazines; and the inflight entertainment headphones now incorporate new noise-reduction technology to ensure an even better listening experience.

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