Airport Experience® News - Food & Beverage Issue 2025

sales, it stands to reason – especially as lounges continue to expand their offerings and amenities – that this is the case. “Intuitively, the rapid growth in number and evolution of lounges must negatively affect concessions,” he says. “Passengers are spending time in lounges, they’re spending time in queues to get into lounges. It just makes sense that this is time passengers are not patronizing concessions. “Consider Rich Schneider’s observation during the AXC lounge panel that Areas’ worst-performing wine bar is in Ottawa, underneath a lounge,” Weddig continues. “Consider my own observation of a dozen or so passengers milling about the entrance to the Sapphire Lounge at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) waiting for their number to come up in the electronic queue. These are airports with good dining and shopping options, yet passengers are opting to wait for a lounge rather than opt for a concession. I infer there must be cannibalization.” Like Schneider, David Bisset, chief development officer for Paradies Lagardère , has his own anecdotal evidence. “We’ve seen that the introduction of a new lounge in close proximity to our dining units can

lead to a measurable decline in sales,” he says. “For example, one of our restaurants located near a newly opened American Express Centurion Lounge in the third quarter of 2024 experienced an 18.5-percent drop in sales.” Bisset adds that the negative impacts are especially felt when lounges offer similar

Above: This year alone, Philadelphia International Airport has welcomed more than 40,000 square feet of new lounge space across three units, bringing the airport’s total number of lounges to 12.

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AX NEWS JULY/AUGUST 2025