Just back from Zurich yesterday. It was my first suites experience & I obviously enjoyed it.
We stayed at the Raddison Blue airport hotel in Zurich which was good as it relieved a lot of the stress on flying day. Public transport was pretty good, so I could imagine a lot of people would have preferred to stay in the city. The raddison blue hotel itself was nice enough. Like almost all our hotels in europe (about 4-5), I found the bed too hard for my preference. But the main plusses was the location and the fact that it was clean.
Back to the suites flight. I asked for a private room invite at check-in, but was told they'd run out and to ask again at the gate. There was nothing wrong with the check in, but by no means was it special. We were treated no differently to economy passengers. Getting to Terminal E was more of an effort than anticipated because it was a completely seperate terminal in the airport - detached from the main 3 terminals (1-3). It was around a 3 min train ride.
Once we got to terminal E and found the lounge, I was VERY impressed with it. Easily the nicest lounge I've been to (though that's not saying much given I only know the domestic qantas & virgin lounges). I enjoyed 1 whiskey & the other half had a coughtail as our flight was delayed by 3.5 hours before boarding and a further 1.5 hours after we had boarded due to a frozen fuel pump and then later some other glitch (was -8˚). Once airborne, the attendants were very friendly, but in a professional manner rather than a genuine warm way. I'm clearly nit picking, and was more than happy with it considering we just paid taxes (felt like a fraud being there to be honest), but as an overall experience I kept thinking how I'd feel if we had paid full fare? I've not flown any other 1st class, so can't compare to them, but we both decided that our trip over on the A350 business class was nearly as good. Dining presentation on business was a notch below suites, but food was still great, bulkhead seats had ample room, and we were both blown away by how nice the new fit out on the a350 is. Suites definitely feels much more dated in comparison even though it was still more than comfortable.
Because of the delays, our connection at singapore was immediate which meant no visit for me to the private room. Oh well...
Anyhow, it was my first true international business or first experience (I don't count an old premium economy-like flight to NZ that was branded business), and very much enjoyed.
With any luck we'll be able to fly business again next year once we dump our plat edges and sign up to explorers.
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