Airline hosts ‘Bonding Buffet’ to bring solo travellers together at Christmas
By Angharad Welsh on Friday, December 23, 2016
I’m a sucker for a Love Actually at the airport moment – they literally make me feel like the Grinch when his heart grows three sizes in one day – so I had to squeeze this in from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines before Christmas.
With so many people travelling solo home for the holidays, the airline decided to do something that would bring people together in the true spirit of Christmas before their flights at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
The Bonding Buffet premise is a simple one – a table on a platform in the air surrounded by weight sensor seating. When someone sits on a seat, the table lowers a little. With all the seats occupied, the table, full of festive food drops down and the strangers share a meal together.
I’m choosing not to be cynical about this – it’s that Grinch heart thing I mentioned earlier, I’m ‘feeeeling’.
In all, 60 people of 20 different nationalities put down their tech and their books to share a Christmas meal together, and the resulting video on social media really does warm the heart.
And it looks like I’m not alone. At the time of writing, the video had been up on KLM’s Facebook page for six hours and amassed 2.1 million views, 25,000 shares, 49,000 reactions, and 2,400 comments.
Not bad for something so warm, fuzzy and obviously saccharine!