Clubland

CLUBLAND

Courtesy Paperplane Magazine
Words Dan Jones.

Champagne cocktails, spa treatments and luxury leather seats. There’s a new move to towards pure travel hedonism and it all happens before you get to your destination.

Airports are odd places. Curiously sterile environments for tearful farewells, a last minute rush at duty free, or for nervous smokers to stick on a nicotine patch. Beeping golf carts strain under the weight of big boned seniors, or flustered ground staff with clipboards and radio headsets. You queue for check-in, get frisked by security, and then what? Above all, airports are places for people with time on their hands, and few things to do apart from
flick through Sodoku puzzles or Dan Brown paperbacks. Or relax on chewing-gum stained loungers between sleeping back-packers, or on unexplainable patches of damp. Even the most modern airports leave something to be desired.

Virgin Atlantic noticed this void in well-designed airport spaces, so they put together a plan to bombard their guests with jaw-dropping extravagance, on and off the plane. Their new (GBP)11m business class Clubhouse at London Heathrow airport works to a simple premise: to try and outdo any kind of service you might experience before and after your flight. And it does. The Clubhouse is a luxury playground with hedonistic spa treatments, Bumble and Bumble hairstylists, a working waterfall, champagne cocktails and, for some reason, a fresh herb garden. It’s a boutique environment where everything you see or touch has its own unique design history, a diametric opposite to the bland concourse outside.

Collaborating with supercool London-based architects Softroom, Virgin Atlantic have made full use of the double-height space, keeping a rather grand sense of scale in the 2,500 square metre lounge. The clever handmade touches are exhausting. Bespoke wallpaper; a dark, sunken bar; a black marble staircase and lighting that dims into an soft orange sunset in the evening - it’s more members’ bar than airport lounge. But it’s probably the pop star trimmings that excite the most: the steam shower rooms; sauna and circular hydropool; concierge and Eames Lounge Chairs . The ‘groom pods’ are curved black private suites with electric massage chairs and beauty therapists on hand for those who are in need of a manicure, pedicure, wet-shave or a quick pre-flight pluck. You might think a San Tropez spray tan booth is going too far, but of course, they’ve got one of those too.

The experience continues onto the plane and the new Upper Class Suite is another Virgin project with Softroom, but with a few extended luxuries. Virgin now has the world’s biggest flat bed in Business Class, rather than a reclining seat, so there’s no compromise between the two as the chair actually flips over into a flat mattress. Inside a curved booth, you can listen to podcasts, learn Japanese or watch the entire series of Little Britain curled up in bed - just like you do in your bedroom at home (but without the mouldy coffee mugs and piles of dirty undies). Or, you can hang out at the cocktail bar with its Swarovski crystals and chandeliers.

Be careful, though, Virgin Atlantic might spoil every holiday experience you’ll ever have . Our advice? Forget the holiday. Fly Upper Class to London and hang out in the Clubhouse, it’s probably more indulgent per square inch than anywhere else you’re traveling to.