Reply To: Guesting strangers in to the BA Exec Lounges

[AJA]

How many passengers are actually guested into the lounges by Silver and Gold members? Let alone complete strangers? I’m not sure changing the rules to prevent guesting would actually make that much difference. And I wonder how many passengers are Gold or silver members flying economy or WTP?

BA plainly thinks that the BAH double TP offer is working to their benefit otherwise it would have ended already. In fact they’ve widened it to include USA departures so that suggests that the business class passenger numbers are still skewed toward leisure passengers rather than traditional business customers. And in reality I think most people taking advantage of the double TP offer are actually travelling in Club or higher anyway to maximise the number of TP they earn. They would still be eligible for lounge access by virtue of the ticket itself.

As for increasing the number of TPs to achieve Silver I think that would probably be counter-productive. It’s bad enough that they’ve recently changed the Avios earning such that it makes very little difference between Blue and Gold as to the number of Avios you earn from flying. They would have to improve the actual lounge offering to justify doing that. The idea of a loyalty scheme is to entice people to continue spending with the airline. If you make it too difficult to achieve status then why fly BA?