Schiphol lounges and VIP services, explained from the kerb inwards

A private terminal, a membership for the border, a wall of lounges and a handful of priority lanes. Each is sold by somebody different, each solves a different ten minutes, and none of them drives you into Amsterdam. Here is the map.

Guests ask about the VIP side of Schiphol more often than about anything else at the airport, and the question is usually the same one in different words: what am I actually buying? "VIP" at Schiphol is not one product. It is several, sold by different organisations on different terms, each shortening a different part of the journey. Our chauffeurs see the end of all of them — the moment a guest comes through a door and looks for a name sign — so this is a description from that side of the glass.

Four things people mean by VIP at Schiphol

Before comparing them it helps to separate them. These are distinct services with distinct owners, and only one of them has anything to do with a car.

• The Schiphol VIP Centre — a private terminal run by the airport itself, with its own entrance, where check-in and the formalities happen away from the main halls.
• Privium — the airport’s membership programme, best known for the automated border lanes reserved for members whose passport qualifies.
• Airline and independent lounges — rooms behind security for passengers who are waiting, entered on ticket class, frequent-flyer status, a lounge card or a ticket bought at the door.
• Priority and fast-track lanes — shorter queues at check-in, security or boarding, offered by individual airlines to their own premium passengers.
• Special assistance for passengers with reduced mobility is a fifth thing entirely: it is free, and it is arranged through your airline when you book the flight, not at the airport on the day.

The VIP Centre is a building, not an upgrade

The VIP Centre is the service people picture when they say private terminal. It is a separate building with its own entrance, well away from the queues at Departures 1, 2 and 3, and it is booked directly with the airport and paid for separately from your ticket. That last point surprises people: it has nothing to do with the cabin you are flying in. A passenger in the back of the aircraft who has booked it may use it, and a First Class passenger who has not booked it may not.

Departing guests are received in the building, dealt with there, and brought to the aircraft when it is time. Arriving guests are collected and brought back to the same building, where the luggage catches up with them. What happens on the apron in between is arranged when the booking is made, by the airport and the handler rather than by a chauffeur outside.

Privium, and what a border lane can save

Privium is a membership run by Schiphol. Its best-known benefit is passage through the border at automated lanes reserved for members, which is worth real minutes at the hours when the desks are busy and nothing at all at the hours when they are not. Eligibility depends on your passport rather than your ticket. There is more than one tier, and the extras attached to the higher tier are adjusted from time to time, so the airport’s own pages are the only source we would trust on the detail.

What a border lane cannot do is move your suitcase. Bags come off the aircraft when they come off the aircraft, and a member who clears the border in ninety seconds often stands at the same belt as everyone else, several minutes early. That is the shape of most airport products: they compress one step and leave the others alone.

Lounges: a comfortable wait, not a shortcut

Lounges are the most familiar of these services and the most misunderstood. Every one of them sits behind security, and every one of them is for people who are waiting. There are broadly four ways in: the ticket you bought, the status you hold with an airline or alliance, a lounge membership or card programme, and simply paying at the door of one of the independent lounges. None of those routes makes an aircraft leave earlier.

The point that matters for planning is the one nobody advertises: there is no lounge on the arrivals side. A passenger who has just landed walks the pier, queues at the border if the flight came from outside the Schengen Area, collects the bags and comes out through a door into an arrivals hall. Nothing about the cabin, the card or the membership changes that sequence, which is why the arrivals hall is where we put the chauffeur.

The gap all of them leave

Line the services up and the gap is obvious. They begin at the airport boundary and they end at it.

• A fast-track lane at security has no effect whatsoever on the A4.
• A lounge closes behind you at the gate, and does not know the name of your hotel.
• The VIP Centre ends at its own door, with a car park in front of it.
• Privium takes you through the border and leaves you at the baggage belt.

That last stretch — the door to the car, the car to the address — is the one part of the day a chauffeur company controls outright, and it is the part that decides how an arrival feels.

How a chauffeur pickup fits around the rest

Nothing on the list above is part of a car booking, and we do not sell any of it. What we do is take the schedule your flight actually produces and build the ground half of the journey around it. On arrival that means a chauffeur standing inside the hall your flight number feeds into, holding a sign that says whatever you asked it to say — your own name, an organisation’s, or no name at all — from before the wheels touch down. The fare is per car and per class and it was fixed when you booked — Business Class from Schiphol to any address in Amsterdam is €90, taxes included — so a slow border queue costs you time and not money. What every airport pickup includes is the same whether you spent the flight in a lie-flat seat or an exit row.

If you do use one of the airport’s own services, tell us at booking and the pickup point moves to match it. A guest leaving the VIP Centre is collected at that building rather than in Arrivals. A guest flying privately is a different case again: business aviation is handled well away from the passenger halls, at the General Aviation Terminal on the eastern side of the airfield, and for private jet transfers our dispatch desk takes the timing straight from the flight handler, slot changes included.

A booking order that works

1. Book the flight, then any airport service you want, directly with the airport or the airline. They are theirs to sell and their terms apply.
2. Book the car with your flight number on it. That is what lets us track the aircraft and find the right hall.
3. Say which door you will come out of — an arrivals hall, the VIP Centre, the General Aviation Terminal — so the chauffeur is at the right one.
4. For departures, put the pickup at least three hours ahead of the flight. If a lounge is waiting for you, a generous margin costs nothing but a comfortable chair.
5. Travelling as a group or with more luggage than passengers? Van Class takes seven passengers and seven bags per car, with the same meet and greet.

Used well, the airport’s premium services take the friction out of the middle of a journey. They simply stop at the exit. Book the car for the part that starts there, and the two halves fit together without a queue between them.

Questions, answered

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