Coral Executive Lounge Phuket Review (Priority Pass)

Worth Coming to Airport Early For: NO (bad food, no bathroom, mediocre seating)

Better Than The Terminal? NO (although the terminal at Phuket airport isn’t that great either)

Introduction

After exhausting all my PTO on my trip to Southeast Asia, it was time to head back to reality (staring at spreadsheets in NYC).

While I really enjoyed Thailand, I was also pretty tired from bouncing around cities for the past 2 weeks and was ready to head back home. The vacation wasn’t over quite yet though, as I would have 20+ hours flying in Finnair’s AirLounge business class back to JFK which I was super excited about.

My first stop on this journey was the CIP Coral Executive Lounge, which ended up being the lowlight lounge of the trip. It was truly terrible, and shows that even Asian priority pass lounges can be (surprisingly) bad.

In this post, you’ll find:

Getting to the Airport

Getting to Phuket airport can actually take quite some time, depending from where you’re coming from in broader Phuket.

Phuket is a surprisingly large and sprawling area, so make sure you map out how much time a Grab ride / taxi will take before your flight and leave a buffer for traffic. I was coming from Patong beach, which took roughly 1 hour despite only being ~19 miles from the airport.

Phuket airport is pretty old and run down in general, so it’s not a place I’d budget a lot of time to spend (unlike Changi for example). The AOT (Airports of Thailand plc) is working on constructing and upgrading a new international terminal to bring capacity up to 18 million passengers per year by 2029, up from the current 12.5 million.

What was really interesting about this airport in general is that airport announcements were made in (a) Thai (b) Russian and (c) English. Thailand in general continues to remain very popular for Russian tourists in general, and it also made easier given the fact Thailand has a neutral political stance and allows direct flights from Russia (i.e, there’s a nonstop on Aeroflot) vs. Western countries who have generally banned direct flights and overflight.

How to Access the Lounge & Where to Find it

Anyways on to the lounge. This lounge has standard priority pass access rules. I got in with the priority pass membership I have via my Amex platinum. The lounge is open from 6am – 12am daily.

In general, priority pass lounges in Asia are quite nice relative to the US. Unfortunately, this one is an exception against that norm.

This lounge is located in the international terminal on the 3rd floor, near the north end of the terminal near Gate 11, right next to Burger King. That has to be a negative signal, if anything.

Lounge Tour & Amenities

The lounge is basically one long hallway and a medium sized room at the end. The food area looks like a cafeteria, which would be forgivable if the food was good. The food was not good.

Here were the hot food options in the lounge. After having some dodgy curry though two nights ago in Patong, I wasn’t willing to take any gambles before a 14 hour flight.

One of the biggest downsides of this lounge is there’s no bathroom – you have to go to the terminal if you want to go to the bathroom or wash your hands, which is not ideal for any lounge.

My favorite part of the lounge was the large room at the end, which had a ton of great natural light and a partial view of the tarmac. It gave elegant conference room vibes.

Conclusion

All in all, this lounge was very underwhelming. Unless you want a quick drink or coffee, I’d just skip it and spend time in the terminal next time if flying out of Phuket.

Luckily, it was all uphill from here, since I was heading on to what would be one of my favorite flights ever trying Finnair’s AirLounge Business Class for the first time on their seasonal Phuket – Helsinki route.