Travel Weekly Blog

It's been a bad week month summer year for UK airports, so sorry to twist the knife further with some good news from Amsterdam Schilpol.

The airport has teamed up with baby food manufacturer Nutricia to create a rather swish and completely free Babycare Lounge in the airport's main terminal.

Thanks to business trend monitoring service Springwise for the find:

The area features seven circular 'cabins', each of which can be closed off with sheer curtains to create a personal zone. The booths have comfortable seating curving around a crib. Lights are dimmed for sleeping babies, with individual reading lights for parents. Each booth has a gadget that projects coloured lights just above the crib. Other facilities include a changing area, baby baths and a microwave for heating food.

Great idea. It isn't just security and check-in queues that make flying unpleasant. Travellers are also maddened by joyless environments and worn-out facilities, which are doubly difficult for those with young children in tow.

Amazingly, Nutricia isn't using the facility to sell its product - it's just an exercise in goodwill.

And I'm sure it works. Transpose this to Heathrow right now and I guarantee there will be at least 100 families who fall to their knees and worship Nutricia 's baby gunge as if it were a god.

Nathan Midgley, web producer