Review: The East Lounge, Dublin Airport

Located on the walkway between Terminal 1, Terminal 2 and the US Border Clearance area, The East Lounge is the most premium and newest lounge offerring available at Dublin Airport. This lounge has the potential to be one of the best airport-operated lounges in Europe with a few exceptions.

Access

The East Lounge has rather exclusive access requirements when compared to other lounges at Dublin Airport. The primary audience for this lounge is first class passengers travelling on the three key Middle Eastern airlines, Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways. All other airlines, besides Aer Lingus and BA, send their passengers to the worse T1 and T2 Lounges which are also operated by Dublin Airport Authority. No lounge access programmes such as Priority Pass or Lounge Key allow admittance for free. As I was travelling on Air France on this journey, I needed to pay a fee of EUR 30 to gain admittance to the space. This isn’t cheap but it is cheaper than peers such as the Plaza Premium at Heathrow, which is reviewed here.

The lounge is open from 05h30 to 14h30 on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday as well as 06h30 to 14h30 on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.

Finding the lounge

For travellers coming from T2, you will need to turn left after security and head towards the connecting walkway between the two terminals. I assume the opposite is true for passengers heading from T1 to the lounge. The lounge is easily found with its clear signage and modern frontage.

Initial impressions

The entrance to the lounge creates an exclusive atmosphere thanks to a separated reception cut off from the rest of the lounge with frosted glass. The space at the East Lounge is expansive and wide with an abundance of natural light flooding in. It is an impressive and modern lounge that has clearly had a lot of money spent on it to meet the expectations of the Middle Eastern carriers it targets. Starting on the right of the lounge, this area is configured primarily on for lounging around with large sofa style seats and warm lighting.

Around half of the lounge is dedicated to sofa style and bar stool style seating with a combination of configurations - some suited to groups of twos and fours.

Towards the left side of the lounge, a dining area provides a focussed area for people to grab a bite to eat. This is split on two sides but both provide similar setups of seating. 

The lounge is then completed with a stunning bar with seating also available. 

Food and drinks

Despite the impressive fixtures and design of the lounge, food and beverages were mixed to say the least. A self-serve buffet can be found near the bar, but Covid-era service levels were still in place which is to say that the area consisted of packaged foods. 

The quality of that packaged food was good and was surprisingly tasty but compared to the pre-Covid offering of hot food, it is a poor offering by the East Lounge. The selection was also limited with only a few types of packaged items available, I tried the Nacho Box and Chicken Satay Salad.

Drinks, however, were much better. The bar offered a full selection of alcoholic and soft drinks as well as a decent coffee - albeit not as good as the T1 Lounge. 

Amenities 

Considering the Covid restriction on the food and beverage options, I was surprised to see that there were showers available and open. The lounge offers a couple of shower rooms in gender-specific spaces. The shower rooms are impressive and extremely modern, giving off impressions similar to that of the Cathay Pacific Lounge at Heathrow Airport. Fixtures and fittings were of a high quality as well as decent shower gel on hand.

The toilets were of equally high quality following a similar pattern to the shower rooms offered.

Finally, high speed internet is available that is speedy enough to be usable for video calls online.

Conclusion

Save for the food, this lounge is an impressive, attractive and comfortable space to spend a few hours in. With paid admittance, you can spend up to three hours in the lounge which I would highly recommend when the food offering is improved. I entered when the lounge opened at 11am, but it did begin to fill up quickly due to a departing flight on Emirates. If possible, I would try to get in before most of the Middle Eastern airline passengers begin to file into the East Lounge.