Priority Pass TPE Taipei Airport: Plaza Premium Lounge
Priority Pass TPE Taipei Airport lounges are available in both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 at TPE Taoyuan International Airport. Each terminal has a 24-hour lounge available and in this post we'll be going over the Plaza Premium Lounge D located in Terminal 1.
There's actually a lot to do in Taipei airport besides the Priority Pass Lounges. TPE airport is full of a bunch of free open lounges along the main walking corridor and Taipei airport features include free massage chairs, showers, gym, movie room, computers and more! Check out all the things to do at Taipei Airport layover guide.
Finding the Plaza Premium Lounge at TPE Airport Terminal 1
After you pass through passport control, you can go left or right. Yes, just pick either. Both paths will lead you to the lounge corridor. Let's say you take a left at Passport Control. Then the path will lead you to take another left when you see the Godiva chocolate shop. As you proceed forward, you'll see an escalator on the left that with a sign that says "VIP Lounge". This is where all the airport lounges are located in Terminal 1.
Proceed down the corridor and there will be 2 Plaza Premium lounges here. The further (smaller one) is Plaza Premium Lounge D and that's the one open 24 hours. Since I arrived at the airport at 4am for an early flight, I went in to the 24 hours airport lounge at TPE airport.
Getting In To The VIP Lounge at TPE Taipei Airport
You probably already know how awesome Priority Pass Lounges are, but if not I have a pretty good explanation on how Priority Pass works. I think the Best Priority Pass Lounge In The World is in Malta. The worst Priority Pass lounge in the world is probably in Romania. I've been to 40+ of Priority Pass lounges around the world, but that's a small percentage.
How many Priority Pass lounges are in the world?
There are 1,220 Priority Pass lounges in the world. That's in 629 airport in over 140 countries. It's pretty awesome to have that much lounge access in the world. The best part about it is that you get free food, snacks and drinks.
TPE Priority Pass Lounge Hours
Plaza Premium Lounge D is open 24 hours and is accessible with Priority Pass at TPE airport. I think this is a new lounge because everything looks very new, clean and modern. Those are 3 things you typically don't get all together from a Priority Pass lounge.
I had a 6:40am flight on Scoot Air from TPE to NRT. Unfortunately, the Taipei Airport MRT doesn't run start running until 6am and there's no way I'd make my flight. For low cost carriers in Asia, they tend to close the check-in counters 60-minutes before departures.
My initial plan was to come to TPE Airport at midnight via Taipei airport MRT since it's a lot cheaper (NT$150) than taking an Uber from Taipei to the airport (NT$1000), but Scoot Air doesn't allow early check-ins.
From Taipei, you can't even do online check-in!
Sleeping in Airport Lounges At Taipei Airport
If you plan on sleeping at Taipei airport, there are a lot of free options. But if you have Priority Pass, you can do things a little more comfortable at Plaza Premium Lounge D. Unfortunately they have a 3-hour stay limit...but it's not like they go around asking how long you've been there.
If you plan on sleeping in TPE airport's Priority Pass lounge, just do it (yes, like Nike). Plaza Premium Lounge D has large sofas in the corners of the lounge or they have semi-private honeycomb booths. Don't let the 3-hour limit hinder you since they probably won't check.
The lighting is pretty dim and there isn't much foot traffic along the corridor entrance. You can get a very peaceful sleep at Plaza Premium Lounge D.
Food at Plaza Premium Lounge D TPE Airport
The Priority Pass lounge is pretty small so they don't have too much food. But they did have enough to satisfy my early morning hunger so I wouldn't have to buy food on my Scoot air flight.
Bread: Two types of bread available and two small toasters.
Snacks: Three types of snacks available: potato chips, chocolate corn flakes and mixed nuts. I tried to potato chips, which were as expected...potato chips.
Hot Dishes (Ready To Eat): When I was at Plaza Premium Lounge D during breakfast time, they had 3 hot dishes available: tomato pasta, scrambled eggs and potato wedges. I only tried the scrambled eggs which were okay. I've never had amazing scrambled eggs so it's normally a very plain dish for me.
Hot Dishes (Ready To Order): What was really nice about this Taipei airport Priority Pass lounge was that they had a chef! That's something you really only get at more premium lounges in Hong Kong or Frankfurt.
They had small portions of:
1. Taiwanese Beef Noodles Soup
2. Taiwanese Chicken Rice
3. Vegetarian Udon Soup
4. Sweet Potato Congee
I tried the Taiwanese Chicken Rice and it was pretty good. The rice part was my favorite because it was soaked in a rich chicken broth.
Drinks: They had a pretty decent drink selection from soda, mixers and alcohol. They even had Kirin beer on tap as self serve.
Conclusion
My favorite part of the Plaza Premium Lounge D at Taipei Airport was the honeycomb seating. Great for 1 person... possibly 2. I've become very reliant on Priority Pass. I don't actually pay for it, but get it free (indirectly) through premium credit cards because those offer a lot of value in addition to just lounge access. I actually ended up paying $95 annual fee for my AMEX Hilton Surpass card since it includes 10 visits to Priority Lounge (guests or me) and free breakfast and Hilton hotels (for 2). I've definitely got way more than $95 of value from it.
Just having Priority Pass saves you a lot of money from having to buy food in airports and on flights. This is especially critical when traveling in the United States and getting price gouged for an $8 bottled water.
Do you have Priority Pass? If so, what's been your favorite location?
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://blorg.org/priority-pass-tpe-taipei-airport-plaza-premium/