Air New Zealand Melbourne Lounge Review

Ratings:
Seating: 8/10
Food: 7/10
Beverages: 7/10
Entertainment: 8.5/10
Family facilities: 8.5/10

Overall: 8/10

The Air NZ Koru Lounge in Melbourne’s International Airport is the only lounge for Velocity frequent flyers flying East to New Zealand or the USA, the Singapore Airlines lounge covers travel West to Asia. Designed to make you feel like you’ve entered a friend’s home, they’ve done away with the standard uniform carpeting and chairs and replaced them with ‘zones’ furnished with rattan chairs, warm wood tones, weatherboard walls and river stones. The Melbourne lounge is certainly the stand out Air NZ lounge in Australia, far more modern than the Sydney Air NZ lounge.

Upon entering the lounge, instead of approaching a reception desk you’ll find yourself being greeted by a welcoming staff member.  Inside, you’ll find a spacious circular floor plan with seven distinctly different zones to choose from.  In this way Air New Zealand has been able to create a good balance between open spaces and more private areas.  Everything is set up to encourage you to feel relaxed and there are lots of little ‘Kiwi’ touches around the place.

To access the lounge you’ll need to proceed through Passport Control and Security and walk down the International Pier.  From Level 2 near the Café/Bar take the lift or escalator on your right to the Ground Floor and you’ll find the lounge entrance next to Gate 15.

The Replenish zone is in the centre of the lounge and offers passengers snacks and drinks.  The big feature here is an 8 foot long communal kitchen table with inlaid wine chillers, encouraging friends to chat together or read the newspapers.  There are also café tables and chairs, a full bar fridge, food servery area, tea and coffee station (a barista on hand is the glaring omission) and bar area complete with signature NZ beverages. A kitchen has been built on the premises and will prepare all food on site.

The Relax space has a rather unique mock veranda complete with wooden decking, overlooking the tarmac.  As you’ve probably guessed by the name this is a quiet relaxing zone with arm chairs, cushions and throws provided.

The Interactive zone is more like what you might have come to expect in an airport lounge.  It’s furnished with a variety of couches and armchairs in seating areas with access to magazines, newspapers and a big screen plasma TV.

The Recreation zone is a bit like a sports bar, with big screen plasma TV showing a range of sports, casual chairs and ottomans, memorabilia on the walls and premium New Zealand beers on tap. We haven’t seen too many lounges complete with a pool table!

The Refresh zone has all the amenities you might need with bathrooms and showers.  It aims for an exclusive club feel and has Living Nature skincare available for use.

The Business Centre is fully stocked with workstations that have plug-ins for laptops, PCs, fax, photocopier, printers, phones and broadband internet access.

The Koru lounge here has a Kids Room, a really good idea that a lot of other airlines should be considering for their lounges.  It’s ideal for keeping kids safe and allows parents to relax and not worry about any noise the kids might make that disturbs other passengers.  It has a lot of colour and fun with television, books and toys and a special parent overview window visible from the lounge area.

The Service Desk is available for passengers to change their tickets, receive boarding passes and any other special assistance.

We hope you enjoy the lounge next time you’re passing through Melbourne Airport, we think you’ll be impressed.