Club Aspire Lounge – an honest review

We love a good airport lounge! Spending a couple of hours before your flight chilling, charging and snacking is a great way to count down to the main event. Airports can be pretty hectic and crowded, with little space to sit, and you have to get there so early that there’s always time to kill. The bars and restaurants are hideously expensive so I found that by using the Priority Pass app, you can get access to the premium lounges for £24 per person, which, if you eat and drink in them for 2-3 hours, it works out as really good value.

Some airport lounges offer à la carte table service, delicious 3-course meals, alcohol and cocktails all included in the £24 price tag – amazing! And on the other side of the coin, some are pretty terrible. Unfortunately, we found Club Aspire at Heathrow Terminal 5 to fall into the latter category, so here’s the issues we found to help you decide if it’s the one for you (as I sure wish someone had warned us!).

How much is Club Aspire Lounge?

If you arrive at Club Aspire Lounge without a membership or Priority Pass Card, you’ll have to pay around £52 per person, which is comparable to the very most premium, first-class lounges, so you have very high expectations. There is a slightly reduced rate for children and under-2s are allowed in for free. If you have a Priority Pass card, like we did, then it will cost £24 for each adult and child unless you still have some of your free allowance to use.

Do you need to pre-book Club Aspire Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5?

But here’s the thing, on the website, and the Priority Pass app, they encourage you to pre-book to reserve a place and this costs an additional £6 per person, so for our little party there was a £24 extra charge. The advantage of pre-booking meant you get to skip the queue of people who’ve walked up on the day and you get a table reserved for you.

What was on the menu?

Our flight was at 11:50 am, so we were there from about 9:20 am – 11:00 am-ish, during which time they were serving breakfast. After 11 am the food changes to lunch options. The main problem was that there was such a tiny area assigned to food, and it was in a really cramped location so it was hard to get to.

In other lounges there’s a large food area or at least a centrally-located island where people can walk around but there was a long queue here that then made it hard to get back to your seats.The food offering was very underwhelming.

There were only a handful of breakfast items available (eggs, beans, potato rosti and cheap sausages and bacon in a buffet and some cold options of yoghurt, mini pastries and smoothies) , and these were messily presented and not particularly appetising. The pancake machine was painfully slow, leading to queues, and there was a constant shortage of cutlery, with containers not being restocked often enough.

How did the QR ordering process work?

In short, it didn’t! The ordering to your table service was billed as one of the main selling points for this lounge and we were excited to try it. There was a QR code on the table so we tried it when we got there, but an error message came up saying that they weren’t offering food ordering that day.

One of the most frustrating parts of the experience was the advertised QR code ordering service. This was a key reason we chose to book, as the idea of having food and drinks brought to the table felt much more relaxed, especially with kids.

We were really disappointed with our experience at the Club Aspire Lounge in Heathrow Terminal 5, especially given the price. At £24 per person plus an additional £24 pre-booking fee, we expected a calm, comfortable space to start our journey. Instead, it felt cramped, chaotic and far from relaxing.

The main issue is the layout. The lounge itself is incredibly narrow and honestly feels more like sitting in a corridor than a premium airport space. There is an upstairs area which looks like it could be much nicer, but it was completely closed off during our visit, which only made the overcrowding downstairs worse.

Was it a free bar?

The only redeeming feature was that there was a good selection of alcoholic drinks included in the entry price. You had to pay extra for premium alcohol like sparkling wine and champagne, but there was a selection of wine, beer and spirits available which was good. We were there early in the day, so we didn’t get the same value from this as we would have for a later flight, but I had a couple of Disaronnos and Mr D had some beers.

Was there a TV and flight info?

Yes, there was.

What other drinks were available in Club Aspire Lounge?

Drinks were another letdown. The cold drinks are on draught, but the syrup-to-carbonation ratio was clearly off. The Pepsi Max and Diet Pepsi both tasted pretty foul to be honest, which is a basic standard you would expect to be right. The coffee machine made pretty revolting yet incredibly strong coffee and I heard a lot of people complaining about this!

Were there toilets in the lounge at Club Aspire Lounge?

Facilities were also lacking. There are no toilets within the lounge itself, which is inconvenient and surprising for a paid lounge experience. So every time one of the kids needs a wee you have to traipse off out to the main terminal building and then trek back again.

What was the view like at Club Aspire Lounge?

The website boasts, ‘You can expect amazing runway views of Britain’s busiest airport’. The views from the windows weren’t great but the particularly grey day might be somewhat to blame for this. I’ll let you decide if you think it was amazing or not…

Do you recommend Club Aspire Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5?

Having been in lots of airport lounges over the years, and been absolutely spoiled over in Terminal 3 at Heathrow for the same £24, I cannot recommend this lounge. Overall, Club Aspire Lounge felt overcrowded, poorly managed and not worth the money.

With the prebooking fee, we paid £100 which would have been better spent in Pret. We’ll know for next time!

There are far better ways to spend your time and money at Heathrow before a flight. Honest opinion… don’t do it unless you are only looking to drink copious amounts of alcohol and want to get merry (take care not to get drunk or be deemed unfit to fly!) before the flight. The free bar is the only positive in this cramped and unenjoyable lounge.

Where next?

Want to read more about our travels? You’ll find my hotel reviews here.