As part of our South African Safari trip, we first spent a week in the amazing Kruger National Park, and then we spent a week touring the Garden Route, culminating in a few days in cape Town. And with that, our trip came to an end, and it was time to fly back home, to New York. We’d be flying back from Cape Town on Ethiopian Airlines’ Cloud9 business Class, but not before visiting the two lounges that our business class ticket gave us access to: Bidvest Premier Lounge 1, at Gate A3, and then the Bidvest Premier Lounge 2 near the B gates.

Here I’ll be reviewing the Bidvest Premier Lounge 1 near Gate A3, and in a separate post I’ll review the Bidvest Premier Lounge naar the entrance to the B gates.

Briefly, this is a nice lounge, but it is quite small. With two rooms, there’s not all that much space for seating, but at least the seating was comfortable with outlets always in reach.. There’s a also good selection of food and drinks that’s generally of good quality. However, I’d probably prefer going to the Bidvest Premier Lounge near the entrance to the B gates (which I’ll review in another post).

Hours and Location

Cape Town’s single terminal building is divided into a domestic and International departures area. This particular lounge is in the International terminal. When you get through passport control, you’ll bump into the sign with directions, which clearly shows signage to turn right. In fact, the entrance to the lounge is immediately to the right after getting through immigration.

The reception desk is on your immediate left as you walk in through the door, where an attendant will verify your eligibility for access.

When you pass the desk, you’ll immediately get to the stairs to go up. Note that there’s a set of elevators as well, but these are left of the entrance to the lounge’s lobby.

Access Requirements

The Bidvest Lounge network has many locations across Southern Africa (besides only South Africa), and all have similar access requirements:

• The Bidvest Premier Lounge is used as a contract lounge for premium passengers of many airlines flying in and out of OR Tambo’s domestic terminal, including Airlink, FlySafair and CemAir. This is how we entered the lounge, sicne Ethiopian Airlines business class passengers get access to the Bidvest Premier Lounge.
• There are many lounge memberships that will grant access into the lounge, typically 2 hours in advance of your flight’s departure time. This include Priority Pass (which is what we used, courtesy of my husband’s Citibank Strata Elite credit card), Lounge Club, Lounge Key and Dragon Pass, plus a host of local South African cards issues by Amex, Diner’s Club and various regional and local banks. Full list of partners are on Bidvest’s website.
• You can buy a pass, either in advance or as a walk-in. The rates are around 700ZAR (~$40) for a 4-hour walk-in pass before your flight’s departure, or 45 ZAR per 15 minutes for early check-in.

Seating and Design

As you ascend the stairs you’ll find yourself in the first of the two rooms that the lounge consists of. This first space has a bunch of seating, the buffet and a bar, as well as a smoking room and the restrooms. As you can see, there’s an interesting ceiling design with these rounded panels that sort of evoke the look of an airplane fuselage.

The seating in this space consists of several swiveling chairs at the front windows, with a view of the terminal. Otherwise there are various lounge chairs along the edge of the lounge and sets of cafe-style seating with small round tables with two chairs each. In the center, between adjacent tables, is a long, low table of sorts with charging options for your phone.

Along the edge of the space are various lounge chairs. These are quite comfy, and have a little overhanging side table, as well as a built-in outlet to charge devices. Through the windows behind you get a view of the terminal, which is not as exciting as a view of the apron, frankly, but it’s still gives a nice sense of space.

A little further into the lounge is bar-style, high-top seating consisting of stools along a long table. This has a ‘view’ of the entrance staircase.

Walking straight ahead from the stairs to the back of this space, there’s a smoking room there. These are somewhat similar to some of the other Bidvest Premier Lounges that we visited, such as the one at the Kruger Mpumalanga airport’s Bidvest Premier Lounge.

Then to the elft of that is the dining area, with a buffet and a bar. Given the size of the lounge, this area is proportionally quite large, with two islands with cold and hot food options that rotate throughout the day, dessert at the counter at the back, and the bar for essentially all drinks.

There is a bit of a passageway that leads to the second seating area, which has a collection of lounge chairs and swiveling chairs, as well as some privacy/work pods, one in the right corner, and one right by the passageway to the buffet. The overall design here is quite nice, I think. I like the dark colors of the walls that contrast with the colors of the chairs. For me these evoked the colors of the South African landscape, so I felt it was a fitting color scheme after this amazing trip in the country.

The lounge chairs here are generally in good condition, and are comfortable. Side tables separate the chairs, and each has an outlet. The outlet situaiton really is excellent at this lounge, with basically all seating having access to an outlet. At the windows are a series of swiveling chairs with ottomans to rest your legs on.

As I mentioned, there’s two privacy pods of sorts. These are a bit better than pods, and more like little rooms. Unfortunately they are very basic, with there being just a table. When we visited one of the two didn’t even have a chair in them. The other pod has a round table with a few chairs around them, which blocks the door of that pod a little.

Overall, the lounge is on the small side, with only two spaces, but it’s nicely designed space with comfy seating and excellent access to power outlets. Thus eating is all quite comfy as well, but just keep in mind that at peak hours this lounge could get busy given the small space.

Food and Drinks

As mentioned earlier, the dining area is at the passageway between the two seating areas, and consist of a bar, two islands with cold and hot food options, and a counter at the back with breads and desserts. We visited the lounge at the transition between breakfast and lunch, so I will be showing pictures of what both spreads looked like.

The first island has all the cold options. For breakfast, this included a large variety of cut fruit and vegetables, various yoghurts, cereal, and muffins, and also some cheeses and deli meats. This struck me as a very nice selection of options.

Then, there were also a variety of hot options. By the time I got here, there were only 5 of 8 pots remaining, but these included several breakfast favorites, such as scrambled eggs, sausages, grilled tomatoes and potatoes. This is the type of hot breakfast food we’d encountered all over South Africa. Then on one end of the island was a big bowl of fruit, and on the other end was a variety of sandwiches.

The counter at the back had a variety of reads and pastries and desserts. This included muffins, scones, some deep fried dough snacks, chocolate mousse, and some cakes and fruit platters. Overall a very nice selection.

At the bar is where all the drinks can be had. In effect that means that you’d need to go through the bartender for almost every dirnk you might want, except orange juice and water. Any hot drinks, and even a selection of cold soft drinks, but also any alcoholic options such as beers and wines, would need to be ordered with the bartender.

For what it’s worth, there is a nice selection of liquors, besides a variety of international beer options and South African wines. These selections seemed to be identical to what we’d seen at the other Bidvest Lounges we visited, including the Premier Lounge and Sky Lounge at JNB and the one at Kruger Mpumalanga MPQ. There is also a selection of sweets, besides tea bags and sugar and such (though the hot water will still need to come from the bartender).

Then not too long after we arrived, the staff started rotating the food options from the breakfast to the lunch spread, so I made some pictures of those as well. For the island with cold options, the cut fruit, vegetables, cheeses and meats were mostly replaced by a variety of salads and accompanying addons. These all looks rather good and the one or two I tried were very nice. Then at one end a range of dips with sliced breads was presented. The dips including things like hummus, tzatziki and other such favorites.

The hot options took a while to be fully replaced, but the wait was mostly worth it. Rather than the breakfast foods, a large selection of lunch dishes were brought out that included various stews (lamb, chicken, beef) as well as rice and mashed potatoes.

I tried a few of these dishes, but not too much, as I didn’t want to kill my appetite for our flight to Addis Ababa. However, what I tried was generally tasty, if a bit salty. I’d say that you could have a tasty and filling meal at this lounge, with a range of options that is far above what you’d normally expect at a Priority Pass lounge.

Restrooms and Showers

There are no showers in this lounge.

The hallway to the restrooms is in the first of the spaces, which hosts the buffet as well. Walking through to the end will reveal two restrooms.

The two stalls are each fully furnished with a sink and mirror, in lieu of communal sinks outside the stalls. These stalls were very nicely appointed, with nice hand soaps, a little plant and a large mirror. These were all also very clean and well-maintained.

Summary

Overall, while this lounge is a bit small, it has a nice design with comfortable seating and plenty of outlets to charge devices. I liked the aesthetics, which evoked the South African landscape, from the ocean and mountains of Cape Town, to the arid Karoo and dusty savannah of the Kruger National Park.

There is a variety of foods, both hot and cold options, and these exceeded my expectations. Priority Pass lounges in Europe and the US (and perhaps the rest of the Americas) are not really known for excellent quality, but they tend to still be a comfortable place to relax before your flight. However, I’m happy to say that this is yet another Priority Pass-accessible Bidvest lounge that’s way above average in the Priority Pass sphere of quality.

Given the small size of the lounge, the fact that there’s only two bathroom stalls (which are fully equipped with a sink as well) shouldn’t be too much of a problem. And while the lounge didn’t get all that busy while we were there, I can envision it may get a lot busier at peak times, when multiple International flights are departing.