Cathay’s new Beijing lounge to open late 2025

Cathay Pacific will transform its lounge at Beijing to a stunning new space along the same lines as its latest lounges in Hong Kong and around the world, resulting in a new “flagship lounge” for the Chinese capital.

The current lounge will close on August 1 2024, setting in motion the extensive upgrade process; Cathay says the new lounge is expected to reopen “by the third quarter of 2025."

“During this period, eligible members and passengers can use the BGS First and Business Class Lounge (Terminal 3)."

Vivian Lo, Cathay’s General Manager for Customer Experience & Design, has previously told Executive Traveller the Beijing lounge will adopt “our Cathay signature design template” with a warmly elegant ‘residential feel’ established by feted UK designer Ilse Crawford.

“We’re very proud to offer some of the best lounges of China, in Shanghai and Hong Kong,” she remarked, and she now wants to “replicate the great lounge experience in Beijing.”

Cathay's new-look Beijing Lounge will share the same elegant design as its Shanghai counterpart.

Beijing is part of a trio of “newly-designed flagship lounges” arriving over the next three years, alongside a fresh Cathay lounge to emerge in early 2026 at New York’s JFK Terminal 6, and an intriguing lounge at the Oneworld airline’s home port of Hong Kong, which Executive Traveller hears could see the return of  The Bridge.

Also on that roadmap could be more lounges for China’s Greater Bay Area, along similar lines to the new Shekou Lounge at the Shenzhen Bay ferry port.

Cathay Pacific's one-of-a-kind Shekou Lounge.

“Our lounge template was very much designed around airports, but this was our first non-airport lounge,” Lo explains, where travellers spend a much shorter time and have different expectations, including “a dining proposition that is for more of a quick bite” ahead of the 30-minute fast ferry ride to Hong Kong airport.

Lo said Cathay was “open to considering other options” for Shekou-style lounges – Macau has been rumoured, and could leverage the link provided by the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge – but “it very much depends on where there is a suitable location and whether there's a way for us to control that experience” in the same way as the seamless operations at the Shekou Cruise Center, which includes dedicated Cathay check-in desks with luggage transfer.

“Shekou is a very, very important experiment,” Lo stresses. “And if it’s proven successful we'll look at other options, whether that's a Macau or other ports in the GBA, but the ability to control that experience will be key.”

In all, 2024-2025 are shaping up to be busy years for Cathay Pacific, with the launch of the airline’s new premium economy recliners and Aria Suites business class, followed in 2025 by the promised arrival of the first Cathay Boeing 777-9 jets with new first class suites.