“This is truly Business Class as never seen before”
The words of Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker at the world’s largest travel show; ITB Berlin, last Wednesday. A colorful character with a penchant for somewhat controversial comments, it was fitting that Mr Al Baker unveiled the airline’s new Business Class experience; the Qsuite, in typically grand fashion complete with live musicians, bright lights and what seemed to be a smoke machine (?!).
The Qsuite is indeed a suite complete with sliding door and ‘Do Not Disturb’ option that will offer added privacy.
‘The industry’s first-ever double bed available in Business Class’. It is not clear from the image below what the arrangement would be for two people in this middle pair but are not travelling together. I can’t imagine they would be very enamored with the double bed idea.
Another highlight of the new seat design are adjustable privacy panels and TV monitors that will allow you to create a private room and indeed dine together if travelling with colleagues, friends or family.
While this sounds great in practice, this may not prove so enjoyable if you were a solo traveller ‘sharing’ this area with a group of 3 travelling together.
You can see the new Qsuite for yourself in the following promotional YouTube video released by Qatar Airways.
VERDICT
This seat looks fantastic and I can’t wait for an opportunity to try it out. Qatar are being bold with their belief that a ‘super-business’ class is the way forward in luxury travel rather than first class. It will be interesting to see if this seat can live up to that claim.
The first route to feature the new Qsuite will be actually be London-Doha with a June launch date. However, these launches are often delayed and I won’t be making any speculative bookings to try this seat until we have a more concrete launch date.