Plaza Premium Group claimed the "World's Best Airport Lounge Group" title at the 2026 World Airline Awards by Skytrax for the tenth year running — a streak that sets a benchmark for hospitality standards in the airport food and beverage environment and carries direct implications for operators benchmarking lounge dining and guest experience.
A Decade of Consistency
The Skytrax awards, widely regarded as the industry's most credible passenger-voted benchmark, evaluated lounges across service quality, food and beverage programming, and overall guest experience. Skytrax CEO Edward Plaisted called the ten-year run "a remarkable achievement," noting that placing three individual locations in the top 10 independent lounges worldwide signals sustained operational excellence across multiple markets and culinary concepts — not a single flagship outlier.
Those three lounges — at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, London Heathrow, and Dubai International — each anchor their food and beverage identity in a distinct regional palate. The Rome lounge, recognized as World's Best Independent Airport Lounge from 2023 to 2025, delivers an immersive Italian culinary experience. The London Heathrow location pairs stylish design with traditional British dishes, while the Dubai lounge weaves Emirati cuisine, local art, and cultural programming into a globally sophisticated setting. For hospitality operators tracking airport dining trends, the trio illustrates how hyper-local F&B curation can drive consumer loyalty in a transient, high-competition environment.
What It Means for Airport Hospitality
Founded in 1998, Plaza Premium Group pioneered the concept of the independent airport lounge — a format that decoupled premium rest and dining from airline membership status. Today the group operates across 600 airports in 150 countries and serves more than 30 million passengers annually, making it the largest global network of independent airport lounges. That scale gives the group significant purchasing leverage and data on global traveler food preferences, two advantages smaller operators and airport concessionaires are watching closely.
The award also reflects a broader shift in how airports monetize dwell time. As airport food and beverage strategy becomes more sophisticated — with operators competing on chef-driven menus, premium spirits programs, and wellness offerings — recognition like the Skytrax award carries real commercial weight in contract renewals and new terminal bids.
Song Hoi See, Founder and CEO of Plaza Premium Group, framed the milestone around the group's founding mission: "When we pioneered the independent airport lounge 28 years ago, our dream was to change how people experience airport transit." That long-horizon commitment to guest experience, reinforced by consistent investment in regional food identity and staff training, is the operational story behind a decade of top-tier results — and a case study worth examining for any hospitality operator competing for captive, high-spend travelers.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
