On a recent trip to Romania, I had some time to spend at Cluj-Napoca Airport prior to catching a flight to Budapest. With there being a Priority Pass in both the domestic and international parts of the terminal, I decided to pay a brief visit to the latter.
Continue reading this review to see what the aptly named Business Lounge was like.
Location & Opening Hours
The international Business Lounge at Cluj-Napoca Airport is located airside, after security and immigration.
When I passed through the airport, part of the terminal was under construction. Because of that, gates B1 through B4 were located in a temporary building connected with the main terminal while gates B5 and B6 were in their original place.
Unsurprisingly, the lounge is in the regular part of the terminal, near gate B5. It is very easy to spot.
The lounge is open daily from 5AM until 7PM.
Entry Requirements
Regardless of what airline you are flying on (or what class your ticket is), you can enter the Business Lounge using Priority Pass for up to four hours. It can also be accessed using LoungeKey. While DragonPass lists the lounge on its website, it lists it as “temporarily unavailable” for some reason.
Being the only lounge in the international part of Cluj-Napoca Airport, it is also the lounge used by full-service carriers serving the airport for their business class passengers and frequent flyer status holders. Among others, Star Alliance Gold and SkyTeam Elite Plus members can use the lounge before departing on a flight operated by an airline in the respective alliance.
Lounge Tour
The Business Lounge essentially consisted of one room and was fairly small. It had seating for 40 or so people.
Given the small number of international flights out of Cluj-Napoca Airport (and the fact that most of those are operated by low-cost carriers), it was more than large enough, though. In fact, during most of the time I spent in the lounge, it was completely empty.
Along the windows which overlooked the check-in hall were two rows of sofa chairs facing each other. These had a small coffee table between them.
There were also some ottomans available for those who wanted them. Additionally, there was a water dispenser and a magazine with mostly Romanian newspapers and magazines.
The inner part of the lounge consisted of the same type of sofa chairs and corresponding two-seaters arranged around coffee tables. Those were ideal for larger groups of passengers.
There was also a small area extending from the main part of the lounge. This is where the buffet (with very limited options but more on that later) and restrooms could be found.
There was only a limited number of power outlets in the lounge, near some of the seats placed along its walls.
Partly compensating for that were two charging stations located in the middle of the lounge. Each of those had a couple of power outlets, as well as a good number of micro USB, USB-C, and iPhone charging cables ready to go.
Food and Drinks
For an international business class lounge, the selection of food was abysmal.
All there was during my morning visit were dispensers with three types of cereals and a dozen or so bowls with different sweet and salty snacks. Among others, there were cookies, wafers, potato chips, and peanuts. There were also some yogurts.
I do not think the food selection gets much better later in the day.
The selection of drinks, on the other hand, was actually quite good.
Starting with cold soft drinks, there were cans of soda (Coke, Sprite, Fanta), bottles of water, and a better-than-average selection of juices (about half a dozen different flavors). Regular and soymilk were available too.
Hot drinks included coffee drinks from an espresso machine, instant hot chocolate, and about ten different types of (mostly fruit) tea bags.
Business Lounge (International) Cluj-Napoca Summary
Not unexpectedly given that Cluj-Napoca is a small airport with very few full-service airlines, the Business Lounge in the international part of the terminal was nothing to write home about. There was no variety in the type of seating provided and there was not much food to choose from.
That said, the drink selection was more than decent and the lounge overall provided a much nicer place to wait for a flight than the public part of the terminal.
