Review: the Sala Lounge Cap Des Falco at Ibiza airport

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• John says:

  1 Feb1 February 04:51

  Well at least the salads and sandwiches are “BOB-ready”, just like in the MAD lounges

• The_real_a says:

  1 Feb1 February 06:15

  Try getting into the IOM lounge with an airberlin card 😉

• xcalx says:

  1 Feb1 February 07:35

  “Conclusion
  What can I say?”

  Well, quite a lot more actually.

  Restrooms?
  Showers?
  WIFI?
  Selection of alcoholic drinks?
  Kids play area? (holiday destination)

  A little info on any of the above would have been a starter.

• Davis says:

  1 Feb1 February 07:50

  This review bears no relation to my multiple experiences of the lounge.

  Of course you would not have found the (summer) clubbing lounge F— Me I’m Famous closed as it is mid-winter and more importantly it closed two seasons ago and was replaced by a Cafe Del Mar Lounge (story here https://thewhiteisle.co.uk/cafe-del-mar-lounge-ibiza-airport/)

  The lounge staff are normally super-savvy about who can get in (I have seen a pribnted grid of cards for who can get in) – not least because they spend their entire day turning away British Airways customers as BA won’t pay for the lounge.

  I posted on Flyertalk that

  The lounge accepts the appropriate customers from:
  Iberia
  Air Europa
  Lufthansa
  Brussels Airways
  KLM

  The lounge accepts Dragonpass but not Priority Pass or any other lounge card scheme.

  When I was last there on 14 Jan the very nice lounge agent said the people from Pririty Pass were coming “with the machine” soon and they were signing the contract in a few days. So fingers crossed it gets sorted soon.

  As you will see from the Flyertalk photos, the fridge is a treasure trove of goodies in summer – the sandwiches are very good and the brioche rolls with cheese or chorizo are awesome and indiwrapped to take away. When I was there on 14 Jan there was understandably a lot less as they only get a few customers per day given the range of flights available

  My experience is that this lounge is a really welcome well-stocked oasis away from the Burger-King hordes at Ibiza airport.

  Maybe you should review a lounge at a holiday island airport at a more appropriate time rather than when convenient. And it might be useful if you did some basic research and got your facts right. You also appear to have an attitude in this article for some reason – driven by your embarrassingly inaccurate first paragraph which sets the tone for the rest of the article. How come you managed to dig out a quote for a lounge that closed two years ago ? It is almost as if you wrote the story without being at the airport…

  • Clive says:

    1 Feb1 February 10:12

    Do you work there? “A well stocked oasis” “a treasure trove of goodies”
    You sound like you’re copying and pasting from a brochure.

  • @mkcol says:

    1 Feb1 February 17:20

    “You also appear to have an attitude in this article for some reason”

    And you appear to have an attitude with your response.

• Davis says:

  1 Feb1 February 08:09

  The Flyertalk Thread is at:
  https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1777083-ibiza-lounge.html

  The photos there are representative of what you would expect in season.

  There are all the normal softs drinks in mid-sized cans (like 330ml is width but shorter)

  From memory there is red wine, white wine. a range of about 5 spirits plus Hierbas

  In the fridge in summer there are sandwiches, salads, brioche rolls with jamon or chirizo or cheese. There are also little tubs of cut jamon serrano with picos and chorizo with picos which I have not seen anywhere else

  There are normally chocolate desserts, arroz con leche (creamed rice) and yogurts

  There is a large accessible male toilet and a large accessible female toilet

  The views are awesome over the airport to the salinas

  The whole ambience is stylish (the chairs are very beautiful and the setting is very beautiful). I am not quite clear why Rob chose to make the point “(and screams for red wine stains – probably the reason why there was no red wine to be found in the lounge).” rather than to make factual observations about the lounge decor

  The posted review is sarcastic in tone and opened by a totally false premise

  The food is better even in mid-winter than you see at most UK airport lounges

  If your reviews are going to be opened by totally inaccuracies to crack a joke and make an opening and then continuing in the same tone, maybe you would be better off not reviewing things at all ?

  The issue with not accepting BA cards is to do with BA not being willing to pay on a Gold and CE heavy route – which is the real story here – which somehow you have missed.

  • Rob says:

    1 Feb1 February 08:23

    A) I didn’t write it

    B) I don’t think anyone would expect them to offer the same level of food in summer but that is irrelevant to the review

    C) Last paragraph mentions BA presumed implicit refusal to pay but we have not been told that as a fact and we are obliged to run to higher standards of verification than FT

    D) It does NOT accept ‘appropriate’ customers from Iberia because if it did then a BA Silver or Gold card would get you in, which it doesn’t. It accepts ticketed business class Iberia passengers only and then only if reception is in the right frame of mind as we saw.

    E) Had the lounge actually let Anika in, instead of making her wait half an hour during which she had to get hold of me in London to dig out the access guidelines after being refused entry with a J ticket, she would actually have had more time there to see what was available and she may even have been better disposed towards it.

    F) Most HfP readers would need to pay to get in here if it doesn’t take Priority Pass or BA status cards. The question is not ‘is it better than sitting in the terminal?’, the question is ‘should you pay €28?’. We applied higher standards here.

    Good news if it is coming to Priority Pass.

  • Evan says:

    1 Feb1 February 08:36

    If you want to bring up attitude mate I’d take a look at yourself first. Anika is entitled to her opinion and she can only review what she sees. She wasn’t there in the summer and her photos of the fridge in winter are just as valid any taken by you in summer. I have no idea who you are and as such I think I’ll stick with Anika and Rob’s reviews rather than yours.

    • Davis says:

      1 Feb1 February 09:15

      I didn’t post the photos on Flyertalk btw

      I agree with you that Anika reviews what she sees

      How then did she not see that the F— me I’m Famous lounge no longer existed (it rebranded two years ago), lifted a quote about it and used that to setup her article around her bad experience ?

      FWIW I really value Anika’s articles as they are very detailed and feel very personal. It is a shame she had such a poor experience this time.

      • Clive says:

        1 Feb1 February 10:17

        Why does your counter-review sound like a commercial?

        “The whole ambiance is stylish”

        “The chairs are very beautiful” ?!

      • Rob says:

        1 Feb1 February 10:44

        I added the quote during editing, because I didn’t think that the over-30’s on here would know what she meant (I didn’t).

        Note that there are plenty of other websites which don’t know that lounge has closed, because I wouldn’t have been able to get the quote otherwise.

  • rd says:

    1 Feb1 February 10:13

    Clearly Davis spend too much time their life in this shabby lounge. Anika is entitled to her opinion. As most flyers cant access this lounge based on BA status, the overall conclusion is that it is not worth paying to access it. Which I agree with. Spend more time at the beach/pool than get to the airport in time to board rather than look forward to the lounge.

• james says:

  1 Feb1 February 08:42

  🙂
  I shouldn’t get too defensive Rob as:
  A) You have editorial control
  B) If Davis comments about the FMIF lounge closing two seasons ago are accurate, it seems reasonable for us to consider that no particular high standards of verification have been applied.

  Coupled with the recent advice of the IHG Points break likely starting at 2pm UK time, when all other blogs suggesting the equivalent of 5PM, maybe some sloppy standards are creeping in?

  But other than that – keep up the good work!

  • Rob says:

    1 Feb1 February 08:46

    There is no official PB start time. They go live in the morning, US EST, which means 2pm onwards. They were historically 2pm-ish – I admit that if the last couple had been nearer 5pm it may not have registered with me as I am so used to 2pm.

    For eg, the May 2015 list went live at 2pm. October 2015 was 5pm (these were the first 2 I could find in the archive.)

    However, if I’d said 5pm and they had gone back to 2pm then the best options would have gone before you checked.

• Anna says:

  1 Feb1 February 08:48

  As a Spanish speaker of Spanish descent, I can say that Anika’s experience sounds absolutely typical of the bureaucracy one can expect when trying to carry out the simplest of tasks in Spain!

• the real harry1 says:

  1 Feb1 February 08:51

  a few more images here https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1777083-ibiza-lounge.html

  I was trying to find a photo of the booze selection – my point here is that whilst I don’t usually go to lounges returning to the UK as I have to drive home (= no drinking alcohol other than maybe a beer!) – for those going home in the UK with somebody else driving, you can very easily justify EUR20-28 to get in. That’s cheaper than a couple of alcoholic drinks & a sandwich on the other side plus it does look very calm & relaxing!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.