I'm ambivalent about the closure of the Stoke lounge because, although it is unfortunate for any useful facility to close, Stoke station...
* is a small station which cannot easily be expanded, in any direction
* is located in a suburban area, with limited facilities in its vicinity
* has a single cafe and a single standard class waiting room
* is served by, at most, 2 VT services each hour both ways
...and the first class lounge conveniently faces one of the station's two main platforms. Converting the lounge into a pub benefits the majority of passengers - existing and potential - making rail travel more attractive overall. Runcorn station is similar (and is anomalous in having a lounge with just 1 VT service each hour both ways).
The same cannot be said of International, Crewe and Coventry. International has multiple standard class waiting rooms, multiple cafes, is attached to an airport (!), is served by 3 VT services each hour both ways used by a large number of business travellers, and has an excessively large first class lounge which could easily be halved, creating space for an additional facility open to all passengers without needing to close the lounge. Crewe has at least three standard class waiting rooms, three WHSmith branches, numerous cafes, a pub, a big empty space at the entrance to the station where the old travel centre (for advance and international travel bookings) used to be, and is served by 4 VT services each hour both ways with many passengers waiting for connections. It also, as Bungle965 highlights below, serves sleeper passengers. Coventry shares a number of these qualities. At these stations, closing the first class lounges would not create any meaningful benefit for the majority of passengers, but
would remove valuable facilities used by many of VT's first class passengers. It would smack of miserliness - the sole desire to eliminate the small day-to-day running costs of these unstaffed lounges.
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I notice that the Edinburgh lounge has been removed from VT's (West Coast) website. It's a pity VT couldn't reach an agreement with LNER.
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Attached is some VT market research about their lounges.
I'm surprised opening times are generally "rated highly".
Given the extent of concern about "availability of snacks", did Butts send VT multiple responses!?