New SWISS lounges open in Geneva

Two new SWISS lounges will open for business at Geneva Airport have now opened, one for SWISS’s First Class customers and one for Miles&More Senator travellers.

The new premises were formally inaugurated today in a ceremony attended by numerous guests, media representatives and delegates from SWISS and the Geneva airport authority. Christoph Franz, CEO of SWISS, Robert Deillon, Director of Geneva Airport and Lauriane Gilliéron, SWISS’s new Ambassador for Western Switzerland, officially opened the new SWISS lounge facilities.

With the new Business Class Lounge having opened its doors last May, SWISS will now offer three new lounges at Geneva Airport for the use of its premium travellers. The entire lounge facility extends over 845 square metres and can accommodate a total of 200 guests at any one time. In addition to SWISS customers, the new lounges are also available to travellers of Lufthansa and other Star Alliance member carriers.

Work on the new lounge facilities commenced in February, and the entire project has only taken some 290 days to complete. “It’s not just in the air that we face a daily fight with our competitors,” said SWISS CEO Christoph Franz in his opening remarks. “The battle for customers begins on the ground.” SWISS’s Geneva-based travellers are the first to benefit from the company’s new lounge concept.

The three SWISS lounges at Geneva Airport are excellently located immediately after passport control and before the security checkpoint. As well as a relaxed atmosphere among contemporary furnishings and fittings, the new lounges offer even more privacy and individualised service for each premium customer.

The new lounges also feature “SWISSness” in their construction materials: over ten tonnes of limestone from the Jura Mountains have been used in the walls. The lounges are the product of a close collaboration between SWISS, Avireal, the Nose corporate identity agency and specialists from the Geneva airport authority.

SWISS recently recruited Lauriane Gilliéron to further raise the profile of the SWISS brand in Western Switzerland. Gilliéron, who was 2005’s Miss Switzerland, travelled to Geneva specially from Los Angeles for the lounge inauguration, and cut the red ribbon to officially open the new facilities. She will be attending further SWISS events and promotions in French-speaking Switzerland over the next few months, especially those connected with the launch of new services between Geneva and Manchester, Rome, Palma and Bucharest.

SWISS will also be opening three new lounges at Zurich Airport soon to meet growing customer demand, especially among the business travel community, and to offer an even more attractive product on the ground. The dedicated First Class check-in area at Zurich will also be enlarged and tailored even more closely to customer wishes and needs. And travellers from Zurich will further be provided with a new SWISS airport ticket office from December onwards.

Find out more at Swiss.com.