Review: the Regus Express Business Lounge at London Gatwick Airport’s South Terminal

This is our review of the Regus Express business lounge at London Gatwick’s South Terminal.

You can see the long, long list of Head for Points UK airport lounge reviews here.

Is Regus Express a ‘proper’ airport lounge?  It depends.  If you tend to use an airport lounge to work or drink coffee, it does the trick.  If you’re looking for a meal, alcohol, spa treatments, newspapers etc then it really isn’t a suitable alternative.

Importantly, Regus Express airport lounges are available via DragonPass.  They are not part of Priority Pass or Lounge Club, but if you have DragonPass access via NatWest or Barclays then this is an option for you.

Note that you can often get a free 1-hour pass for Regus Express by logging in at the MyGatwick website.  We wrote about MyGatwick here.

The Regus Express airport network is growing.  As well at Gatwick South, you will find them landside in Heathrow Terminal 5 (very small), Heathrow Terminal 2 and Heathrow Terminal 3 (not been in, but it looked small when I saw it during construction).  There is also a Regus Express at Birmingham Airport.

Here is an official PR picture of Regus Gatwick:

Why was I at the Regus Express at Gatwick South?

I was in Crawley to speak at a Virgin Atlantic management conference.  This was done and dusted by noon, but there was little point in heading into the City when I live in the other direction.  Spending the afternoon doing some work at Gatwick Airport made more sense, allowing me to hop on a train to Victoria in the evening and then walk home.

I had one DragonPass lounge access voucher via the (now expired) £7.80 RED By Dufry lounge pass offer we covered in January.  As it happened, the reception desk was unmanned when I arrived so my pass was never scanned and it lives to be redeemed another day!  You may see a review of another Regus lounge soon.

Where is Regus Express at Gatwick South?

Regus is situated on the lower level, directly opposite the Yotel Gatwick hotel entrance.  From the train station, you need to head towards the lifts next to Costa Coffee and head down.  It is well signed.

The lounge is open from 7am to 6pm, Monday to Friday.  It is NOT open at weekends.

What is inside the lounge?

Here are some shots of the communal working area.  However, the lounge is a LOT bigger than this.  Regus makes its real money from renting out the 11 meeting rooms.

There are even some showers in the lounge, which isn’t something I was expecting!

Here is the reception area:

If you imagine that you stand in same spot but look forwards, you can see the refreshment area:

…. and if you look to your right you have the main hot-desking area:

and

There is actually a lot more work space – but no one uses it.  There is an area by the windows here:

…. and, as you can see to the left of the picture above, some more seating in the centre.

The reason no-one uses this is glare.  You have light through the large windows and, at the table, you have electric light shining down at you.  Unless you have a matte laptop screen, you can’t read anything.

This is why everyone who came in during my time there ended up working in the area at the back of the room …..

Regus Express at Gatwick has free food

This was the first time that I had ever been in a Regus with free snacks:

It’s not a meal, to put it mildly, but it is far more than they usually offer.  It was enough to mean that I didn’t need to run back up to the terminal at any point during the five hours I was there.

There is also a capsule-operated coffee machine and a pot of filter coffee.

Conclusion

As you can see from my pictures, Regus has (finally) learned a few lessons about good interior design.  It’s just a shame that most of the seating areas are unusable on a sunny day due to glare.

There is no reason to come here instead of a departure lounge if you are flying.  Most people would prefer to get through security first, knowing that they can relax with no risk of missing their flight.

If you want somewhere to work during the day before a late evening flight, or perhaps somewhere to work for a few hours after landing into Gatwick, it is a good option.  It is a very quiet and calm environment with good wi-fi and work-suitable desks and chairs.

You can get in with a DragonPass lounge club card or, of course, with a suitable Regus card.  I assume that you can also pay as you go although I couldn’t find any detailed pricing.  You can find out more about the centre here.

You can see all of the Head for Points UK airport lounge reviews here.

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How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2023)

As a reminder, here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a 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 Plaza Premium, Delta Air Lines and Eurostar 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 £20.  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 LoungeKey card, allowing you access to the LoungeKey network.  Guests are charged at £20 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.