Review: the new Clubrooms lounge at Birmingham Airport

This is our review of the Clubrooms lounge at Birmingham Airport.

This article is part of our series of reviews of airport lounges across the UK.  You see all of the reviews here.

Reader Stephen kindly offered to check this lounge out on his flight from Birmingham.  The Clubrooms lounge is owned by No1 Lounges and is their most premium offering.  Clubrooms only opened in late 2018 but No1 Lounges has had a ‘standard’ No1 Lounge in the airport for many years which we reviewed here.

Add in the two Aspire lounges in the terminal, reviewed here and here, and you have a lot of choices now when flying out of Birmingham.

You can learn about the Clubrooms lounge in Birmingham on the No 1 website here.

Over to Stephen:

“The new Clubrooms lounge at Birmingham Airport is located close to gate 54.  It is a 5-minute walk from security.  Access to Express Lane Security is also included for all bookings made in advance via the No1 website.

Opening hours are 05:30 until 20:30 during the summer schedule and 05:30 until 20:00 in winter.

If booked online directly, entry is £34 per person, saving you £6 from the on-the-door price of £40.  Via this Virgin Atlantic offer, it costs £35.00 but comes with 400 Flying Club miles.  There is an additional £10 charge for the champagne package.

Entrance with Priority Pass (which comes free with American Express Platinum, or you can buy one separately), Dragon Pass, Lounge Club (two free entry vouchers with American Express Preferred Rewards Gold), Lounge Key and Lounge Pass comes with an additional £10 charge.

Whilst you could access the Aspire lounges or the main No 1 Lounge in Birmingham with these cards without paying an extra £10, I think it is worth the money if you are looking for a quality experience and are not in a rush.

Regulations state that you can only remain in the lounge for three hours prior to your flight time, but this doesn’t seem to be strictly imposed.

Upon entry, I was given a very warm welcome by the staff and asked if I would like to eat at the dining table or more casual coffee tables. There were only two other people in the lounge when I arrived (09:30), but by midday it had filled up, with only a few empty tables.

There is also a larger table suitable for small groups (up to 8) on the left side of the lounge.  Unlike No1 Lounges, the Birmingham Clubrooms offers table service.

You can order one item from the breakfast menu. There were a range of egg-based options including eggs florentine and eggs benedict, as well as more substantial full English breakfasts. There is also a selection of cereals although there wasn’t a list of stocked products on the menu.

I decided to go for the full English, which was well presented and really nice. The latte was also very good.

There was a limited selection of soft drinks in the fridge to which you could help yourself, although the staff were more than happy to bring over other soft or alcoholic drinks from the bar. The alcoholic selection was good and included a range of cocktails.

There were also a small selection of pastries and fruit for self service.  Unfortunately, the pastries were not fresh and were quite hard. Around 10:30, they removed them and changed them a selection of small deserts, which were really tasty.

For lunch, they offer a choice of English breakfast / beef burger / pumpkin tortellini / soup / salad / eggs benedict / club sandwich.  If you have already had breakfast, however, you are not allowed to have a free lunch item as well.  They police this by giving you a menu on entry and making you hand it in when you place your order.  No menu = no free main course!

This lounge has a really relaxing atmosphere, with music playing softly in the background with a good amount of natural light.

The lounge was very clean, and had lots of staff, who were very attentive offering drink top ups when needed.

They have a selection of newspapers which are complimentary.

and

There is one toilet located inside the lounge which is a positive compared with some of the other lounges in Birmingham.

Unfortunately, the lower panes of the floor-to-ceiling windows are frosted, obscuring the view of the runway when seated.

The Clubrooms wi-fi was good (download speed of 20 Mbps), although there were very few plug sockets, mostly in the corners of each room. Most tables did not have access to a plug.

On the whole, the Birmingham Clubrooms lounge is a very relaxing place to spend a few hours before a flight, assuming you do not need access to power sockets since the few seats which offer them may already be taken.  The service was friendly, and food and drinks were delivered to the table promptly.”

Thanks Stephen.  Looking at the photos, this looks like a beautifully designed and furnished lounge. You can read more about it on the Birmingham Clubrooms page here.

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How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2024)

Here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum instead.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.