Here’s a nice concept for a group of people who have largely been forgotten during the pandemic.
Continue reading: Qatar Airways Opens Mariner Lounge In Doha, Exclusively For Seafarers & Offshore Workers
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I guess ultimately Qatar wants to convince the public to book with them because mariners usually live in tight quarters hence higher possibility of catching the virus. Setting up such a lounge can be good marketing for those who worry about getting infected during the transit in Doha.
"The airline has closed its lounges for oneworld Emerald and oneworld Sapphire members, so the new Mariner Lounge is simply one of the lounges being repurposed."
No. From the photos the Mariner lounge is the old Priority Pass lounge, which moved to take up the space occupied by the (never opened) Emirates lounge above gate A1 about 18 months ago.
Having visited this lounge a few times in the past under its Al Maha branding, I'm not entirely sure this is a positive in any way! 🙂
On a more serious note, Qatar and Emirates both have contracts with the major agencies who manage seamen transfers and are quite aggressive for the business (for example, under my former airline's SPA with QR - probably around 25-30% of bookings were seaman IT fares). They have been offering all sorts of incentives to get this business in the pandemic era such as discounted/complimentary COVID tests, etc.. so this seems to match that strategy. I could definitely see one of the agencies moving business to QR from a competitor based on this kind of incentive.
You’d be surprised how many health care workers are traveling. With staffing challenges all over the world the demand for traveler nurses/doctors has shot up through the roof. I transited through Doha last week and saw multiple people in scrubs in the terminal heading to their connecting flights.
The ICU that my wife works in Hopkins has around 20 traveler nurses and it’s just one of the five ICUs at the main hospital. Travelers are generally limited to three months with one three month extension then they have to move to a different assignment and this often stipulates they have to do their next assignment in a different state.
The cynic in me says this is to isolate those workers. There have been instances in both NZ and Australia of crews having COVID 19.
Hopefully it is simply a kind gesture.
BTW @Ben did you see QF have extended their status again? Just need to take one flight!
https://www.qantas.com/au/en/frequent-flyer/status-and-clubs/status/status-support.html
This segment of business travel has not been as affected by COVID as the majority of business travel. Marine and of shore business is highly looked after by many airlines now, given the willingness and need to travel. Airlines which have a polished marine fare offer now realize the margins they can make. TMC’s alike target marine customers as well. It’s nice to see that this often overlooked niche gets much needed attention. I still remember the days when airlines had seafarer rules in their tickets which often stated: intoxicated marine personal will not be transported and any unruly behavior will be punished...
They did this because passengers complained that some travelers smell and have poor hygiene.
Seafarers never use charter flights! Seafarers are traveling by regular flight schedule, economy class, cheapest seats (mostly around toilets), sometimes their layover is 6 hours up to 20 hours. Most of them are not allowed to leave airport area die to visa regulations. There are thousands of seafarers every day traveling around the world to get to the ship, or either returning home. There are a hundreds of thousands dollars spent on their flight tickets and no one never did this for any of us. Thank you Qatar Airwaves for doing this for all of us who are sometimes way too tired after 9 months working on ships every day 12-16 hours with no weekends and holidays. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you being so kind to know what is really necessary to us. Thank you !
A good gesture on Qatar's part. I'm sure even if it's only for the duration of this pandemic it is appreciated by the many 1000s of seafarers who are still travelling, myself included
Good way to keep seafarer separated from normal people. It is like you know they have to exist but you don't want or need to see it. We all know 3rd world is there. Let's keep it separated. Good move. Pity they can't travel on separate planes either.