American Express opened its second U.S. Centurion airport lounge this month. Dallas Fort Worth is the second location after Las Vegas. There are more lounges to come, including San Francisco.
I visited the Dallas facility on a recent connection, and absolutely loved it. It’s the best U.S. airport lounge I have been to.
Here’s my review of the facility. Here’s my review of the food and drink situation.
And now here’s the scoop on their complimentary spa and their shower facilities.
Exhale Spa
The Exhale Spa is a small room in the lounge. Only one treatment specialist was working while I was there, he was doing 15 minute massages, facials and other treatments wouldn’t be an option that day.
They have you fill out a consent form, it’s a clothes-on massage and I was the only one in the room most of the time but they’re set up to do more than one service in different ‘areas’ of the room at once.
I got into an interesting discussion with the therapist, the spa menu does note that the treatments are complimentary but that gratuities are not included. I pressed him for what he felt an appropriate tip would be. At first he was reluctant, but he shared that he thought perhaps an hour-long treatment would warrant a $20 tip (perhaps 20% on a $100 service), so $5 for a 15 minute treatment seemed right to him.
Here’s the spa mennu, click on it to enlarge the photo:
Walking out of the spa the next guest to get his treatment recognized me, we chatted for a couple of minutes, it turns out he was visiting the lounge having read about it on this blog.
Cleaning Up
The lounge has very nice shower rooms, and they stock their showers with L’Occitane bath amenities.
For completeness, here’s the men’s room also featuring L’Occitane.
All in all an excellent lounge and it makes me look forward to more lounge openings. Even if American Express Platinum should lose American Airlines lounge access as some have speculated could happen in the future, these lounges could be a reason for me to keep the card now that they provide complimentary access. I’m looking forward to going back to Vegas now, too!
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Had a layover in DFW on my way to and from SBA earlier this week and took full advantage of the Centurion Lounge. On the way out, they were serving breakfast which I thought was only mediocre, but I did receive the L’Occitane gift bag and got the 15-minute chair massage. (And, was told that I need to get massages more often by the therapist.) On the way back, they were serving dinner and I had the smoked brisket tacos which I thought were fabulous, but you might be able to chalk that up to my being absolutely starved 😉
I have another trip in a few weeks and purposely looked for a layover in DFW, so I could get back to the Centurion Lounge. It is well worth the stop … And, the annual fee.
Great posts, Gary.
I find the tipping guidance quite helpful, so thank you for that. BTW, there is a typo in the first sentence of that paragraph that makes it unclear exactly what the spa menu actually says about costs and gratuities.
@LarryInNYC – i’ve edited that sentence for clarity, thanks
I just visited the one in Vegas–just a 20 minute stop. The breakfast buffet looked great–brioche french toast as well as several other more pedestrian items. I only sampled the fresh fruit and the excellent coffee. Didn’t see any showers or masseurs but loved their secluded settee knitches (sp?). It was both comfortable and unique, sorry no pictures.
Mandatory (or quasi) tipping? What a way to cheapen the experience.
They should be stating gratuities included instead. That would be classy.