Complete with kitchen, dining room, office and sofas, Helsinki Vantaa Airport has opened a new “cosy” airport lounge, to help passengers feel at home.
 

Helsinki’s ‘Almost@home’ lounge resembles a modern Finnish home, where passengers can relax and pretend to be in their own home.
 

The lounge includes a kitchen where passengers can make their own snacks, a dining room, a children's playroom, a media lounge, and a home office complete with HP computers.
 

Meanwhile, in a typical Finnish way, the sleek-look lounge has been decorated with lots of wood and eco-friendly features.
 

The gateway said the new homely lounge is intended to counterbalance “the often sterile and pompous airport lounges” and that it is a “cosy nook whose furniture and atmosphere bring to mind a Finnish home”.
 

Juha-Pekka Pystynen, director of Helsinki Airport, said: “The new lounge is in line with Finavia’s objective to further improve air passenger services and make Helsinki Airport the most popular transit airport between Europe and Asia.

“How Helsinki Airport comes off in the international competition plays an important part for the offering of flight connections to and from Finland.”
 

Furthermore, passengers can even borrow a pair woollen socks to wear from the reception to pad around the “home”, while in the “living room”, they can sit on a sofa and choose a book to read from one of the bookshelves.
 

“At Helsinki Airport, you can now really feel almost at home,” says Kalle Ruuskanen, managing director of SSP Finland, who operates the new lounge.
 

Visitors also have access to work space where their privacy is guaranteed, added Ruuskanen and it is also possible to book a meeting room in the lounge.
 

The services in Almost@home are available to all passengers. In addition to airline cardholders, other passengers can access the lounge for a fee.