Plaza Premium Group Lounge, Adelaide, SA

With a mission of “making travel better”, Plaza Premium Group is a pioneer and the market leader in airport hospitality services with an international footprint of over 250+ locations, 80+ international airports, 30+ countries and regions and serving 20 million travellers annually.

The opening of their Adelaide Airport lounge, their fourth lounge after Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, is the first and only independent international lounge at the airport. Adopting a unique ‘pay-as-you-go’ system, the Plaza Premium Lounge democratises lounge access and removes the need for travellers to have lounge membership to access premium hospitality at the airport.

The design of the Plaza Premium Lounge emphasises comfort and elegance, with contemporary lighting and furniture. The lounge offers multiple zones catering to different traveller needs, including a bar area, dining space, booths for work and shower facilities for those seeking a pre-flight refreshment.

To ensure that the final fitout of the lounge met Plaza Premium Group’s desire to deliver an elegant, premium feel for travellers, NDY’s team worked closely with the architect, structural engineer and the contractor to ensure the core engineering services were carefully concealed to deliver on the architectural intent of the space. This included detailed weekly coordination meetings to work through the progressing design to ensure all design elements were coordinated, helping to streamline construction on site. This was crucial due to Adelaide Airport’s need to reduce the impact of the works in a live operating environment.

Key to the successful operation of the lounge is the industrial kitchen area. The kitchen included a large industrial exhaust hood. Normally a straightforward piece of equipment to design and install, in this instance required careful design to minimise clash with existing airport services infrastructure and to ensure the outside exhaust did not interfere with airport operations.

Also key to the delivery of a premium feel was the lighting. Incorporating 100 percent LED lighting to reduce energy consumption, the electrical design to support the system required careful consideration and coordination. NDY’s team worked closely with the lighting designer to develop a lighting control system that could easily integrate back into Adelaide Airport’s systems.