You’re traveling with your spouse or partner and are facing a 3-hour layover in a busy airport. Here’s the calculation my husband and I use to know that the $100 (when the fee is $50 per person) we’re forking over to our airline to enter their lounge area is worth it:
| Wi-fi | $10 | This would have been worth even more pre-Smartphone, but for an extended period, it is nice to be able to browse on your laptop. |
| Snacks | $15 | Typically just cheese and crackers, etc., but the value reflects what we’d spend on an airport meal if we didn’t have the snacks. (Editor’s note: $15 would not cover the type of meal we’d eat to survive a 1 to 3-hour layover, but rather the type of meal that would be a substitute for the snacks.) |
| Comfortable armchairs | $20 | We’d each pay $10 to not be stuck in those awful terminal seats. |
| Drinks | $30 | Again this figure reflects what we’d be likely spend on drinks in the airport outside the lounge; in three hours we can each easily drink 3 or 4 glasses of wine or beer each without being very buzzed (needless to say, getting drunk in the lounge seems bad form). |
| Luggage storage | $5 | We tend to carry on rather than check luggage, but rarely find our carry-on bags to be burdensome. However, there is a small value to storing them. |
| Atmosphere | $20 | We’ve probably undervalued this a little (the difference between the calm of the lounge and the bustle of a busy airport can be extreme) but it gets us the rest of the way to $100, thus proving the value for the money of the $50 per person entry fee! |