Every Airport Lounge Is the Same Shade of Beige

I’m in an airport lounge. I won’t tell you which one because it doesn’t matter. It could be Dubai, London, Singapore, New York, or Frankfurt. The carpet is gray. The furniture is beige. The lighting is the fluorescent warmth of a place designed to feel comfortable without actually being comfortable. There is hummus.

There is always hummus.

The Universal Lounge

Somewhere in the last decade, every airport lounge in the world converged on the same design brief: inoffensive, functional, vaguely premium. The chairs are the same ergonomic-adjacent armchairs that signal “business travel” without committing to either comfort or style. The bar serves the same three wines — a Sauvignon Blanc, a Merlot, and a Prosecco that arrived in a box regardless of what the label says. The food is a buffet of the internationally acceptable: hummus, crudités, some variety of sandwich, a soup that could be anything, and a “hot option” that aspires to mediocrity and achieves it.

The businessman at the table next to me is on his third gin and tonic. It’s 9 AM. He’s wearing a suit that cost more than some of the flights departing from the terminal below. He’s not on his laptop — he’s watching something on his phone with headphones in, and the screen is reflected in the window behind him, and it’s a cooking show. This man, who presumably does serious things for a living, has chosen to spend his time in this beige room watching someone make risotto.

I respect him. There’s nothing else to do here.

The Hierarchy

Airport lounges exist in tiers, and the tiers are a perfect metaphor for how the travel industry monetizes the illusion of progress.

Priority Pass lounges: The baseline. Open to anyone with the right credit card, which is now almost everyone. The hummus is here. The chairs are occupied by people charging their phones. The shower, if there is one, has a wait list. The wine is warm. The coffee is from a machine that makes twelve drinks, all of them the same drink with varying amounts of milk. These lounges exist to make you feel slightly better than the gate area, which they achieve, barely.

Airline business lounges: A meaningful upgrade. The hummus is artisanal. The wine is labeled. The chairs are leather. There’s a bartender who makes cocktails, or at least pours spirits into glasses with the professional competence of someone who does this eight hours a day. The food improves — I’ve had genuinely decent pasta at the Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt and surprisingly good dim sum at the Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong. But the design is still beige. The carpet is still gray. The businessman is still watching cooking shows.

First class lounges: The promised land. Champagne — actual champagne, not the Prosecco-masquerading-as-celebration from two tiers below. Hot food cooked to order. Showers with towels that weigh more than your carry-on. The furniture has opinions. The lighting was chosen by someone with a degree. The Emirates first class lounge in Dubai has a spa. The Singapore Airlines Private Room has Dom Pérignon. The Qantas first lounge in Sydney has Neil Perry cooking your breakfast.

And yet. The carpet is still gray. The walls are still beige. The fundamental experience — waiting for a flight in a room slightly nicer than the terminal — is the same at every tier. The champagne is better. The hummus is better. The businessman is still there. He’s upgraded to a cheese plate.

The Exception

I’ve been in one airport lounge that didn’t feel like an airport lounge. The Turkish Airlines business lounge in Istanbul — the old one, before the new airport, and now the new one too — is a genuine space. A putting green. A movie theater. A patisserie with a chef making fresh baklava. A library. An electric train for children, which sounds absurd until you realize it means the children aren’t near you. The food is a full Turkish breakfast spread that would qualify as a restaurant meal. The design has color — actual color, not beige pretending to be taupe.

It’s the only lounge I’ve arrived early for a flight to spend time in, rather than as a refuge from the terminal. That distinction — wanting to be there versus needing to not be somewhere else — is the difference between a space and a waiting room.

The Truth

Airport lounges are not a travel experience. They’re a transaction — you trade loyalty points, credit card fees, or ticket class for a marginally better version of waiting. The industry has convinced us that access to a room with free hummus and warm wine is a perk, a reward, a status symbol. And we’ve accepted this, because the alternative — sitting at the gate like a person without a card — feels like defeat.

I use lounges. I’m in one right now. The hummus is fine. The gin and tonic is fine. The businessman has moved on to a documentary about octopuses. Outside the window, a plane is taxiing to a runway that will take it somewhere interesting.

The lounge is not that place. It’s never that place. It’s the beige room between you and the thing you actually came for.

But the hummus is free, so here we are.

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