Free Cathay Pacific Lounge Access at SFO via Klout.. If You Are Cool Enough
For those of you social-media-savvy flyers jetting in and out of San Francisco this summer, Klout and Cathay Pacific have partnered to offer a pretty cool perk. People who have downloaded Klout's new iPhone app (they introduced it last month) and have a score of 40 or higher can show their Klout score at the reception of Cathay's SFO First and Business Class Lounge for free entry from now through July. I actually find this one of the more useful benefits of Klout - so far, as an "influencer" I've been offered some weird perks like free underwear and energy drinks - no thanks. This is at least a little bit more up my alley, though I probably won't be able to take advantage of it due to my lack of travel plans through SFO.
While the lounge is normally only open to passengers flying business or first on Cathay Pacific or Oneworld partners, this opportunity is open to passengers on any airline who are transiting through the A boarding area of SFO's International Terminal (the lounge is on level 4).
You can read about the full list of amenities the lounge offers in this release from when it opened back in December. Some of the highlights include white Carrara marble and black Chinese granite fixtures, a Venetian-glass wall installation by Fabbian of Italy, special Cathay Solus Chairs (those round booth-like ones) handcrafted by Poltrona Frau, three shower suites, and of course, a signature Cathay Pacific lounge noodle bar. There are also seven workstations with desktop computers and internet, as well as WiFi throughout—take this video tour to see it all for yourself.
Though it has plenty of detractors, there's no doubt that Klout is here to stay. The firm provides social media analytics and measures a person's "influence" based on their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, FourSquare and Google+ profiles and activity, and then assigns them a score between 1-100 based on the amount of influence they have. Klout comes up with this number based on a user's number of contacts or followers, their activity on each site, and whether their followers/friends pay attention to and re-post/tweet/react to the user's posts. Higher scores mean higher "status."
My current Klout score is 62, so I would qualify, though frankly I have lounge access from so many other methods, this doesn't really jazz me up too much. But hey, free is free!
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