Is Pestana Guest Club worth joining?

Today I wanted to take a look at Pestana Guest Club, the loyalty scheme for the Pestana hotel chain. 

It is part of a short series I am running at the moment on niche hotel loyalty schemes.  Earlier this week we looked at Point A Hotels and their ‘A List’ programme.

Pestana’s home page is here.  There is a link to Pestana Guest Club at the bottom.

I am probably more familiar with Pestana than most readers, because their one UK hotel – Pestana Chelsea Bridge – is just a few minutes walk from our house and my parents in law have stayed here.  You can find out more about their London hotel here – it advertising rooms from £98 at the moment which is decent value given the 10 minute walk to Sloane Square.

Pestana is the biggest hotel group based in Portugal.  It operates four main brands:

• Pestana Hotels & Resorts – 52 four and five star hotels across Europe, America and Africa

• Pestana Pousadas de Portugal – 34 hotels based in historic castles, palaces, forts, monasteries and convents in Portugal

• Pestana Collection – seven de-luxe hotels in Lisbon, Cascais, Porto, Amsterdam and Madrid

• Pestana CR7 – a new lifestyle brand, currently with four hotels, developed with Cristiano Ronaldo

Is Pestana Guest Club worth joining?

If you are planning a stay at a Pestana property, it makes sense to sign up for Pestana Guest Club.  For a start, you will save 5% on your room booking.

Membership is FREE.  You can sign up via this page of their website.

What are the Pestana Guest Club tiers?

There are three membership tiers, each with different benefits:

Guest (the initial tier):

• Earn 10 points per €1
• 10% off your room
• 10% off restaurant and bar spend
• One bottle of water per stay

Spend €2,000 across two years or complete 5 stays in one year and you become Elite:

• Earn 12 points per €1
• 10% off your room
• 10% off restaurant and bar spend
• One bottle of water per stay
• ‘VIP treatment’

Spend €5,000 across two years or complete 10 stays in one year and you become Elite Plus:

• Earn 15 points per €1
• 15% off your room
• 15% off restaurant and bar spend
• One bottle of water per day
• ‘VIP treatment’
• Priority check-in
• No service fee for room service orders

A fourth tier was introduced when the programme rebranded from Pestana Priority Guest. Spend €10,000 across two years or complete 15 stays in one year and you become Honor:

• Earn 15 points per €1
• 15% off your room
• 15% off restaurant and bar spend
• One bottle of water per day
• ‘VIP treatment’
• Priority check-in
• No service fee for room service orders
• Dedicated telephone line

There is an additional ‘Corporate’ tier for employees of specif corporations.

The full list of benefits is online here. 

If you book via a third party site such as Expedia you only receive a nominal 250 points per night instead of points based on your spending.  This is actually a generous gesture as few chains offer any benefits at all if you do not book direct.

Spending your Pestana Guest Club points

The best way to spend your points is for a free night at another Pestana hotel.

The ability to transfer your points to TAP Portugal seems to have been removed, although this was always poor value. The Avis partnership (Portugal only) also seems to have disappeared.

The only option is to use your points for free rooms or ‘part cash, part points’ rooms.  Pestana offers revenue based redemption – the more a room costs on a particular day, the more points you will need.  This means that there is no arbitrage available from using your points on peak dates, because on peak dates you need more points!

Here is a typical booking for Pestana Chelsea Bridge Hotel in London for 18th October:

• Twin room – 27,309 points or £145 (0.53p per point)

• Deluxe family room – 31,229 points or £172 (0.55p per point)

This is not bad.  This means that, as a base level member, you are getting just over 5% of your spending back in points as long as you redeem for free rooms.

(This highlights how poor the TAP Portugal airline miles offer is.  If you can get 0.5p per point for a hotel room, and the exchange rate to TAP is 10:1, you are basically ‘paying’ 5p per airline mile.  This is shockingly poor.)

The biggest problem is that you cannot mix cash and points.  You need to have enough points to redeem outright for a room.  This is likely to be a problem unless you are a regular visitor to Pestana hotels.

Points expire two years after you earn them.  This is harsh – very, very few hotel loyalty schemes expire your points whether or not you are ‘active’ in the scheme.

Conclusion

If you are planning to stay at a Pestana hotel, it makes sense to join Pestana Guest Club.

The main benefits will be during your stay – the 5% discount on the room, free parking and free bottled water.  In reality, it is unlikely that you will earn enough points (unless you have a long holiday at a Pestana hotel) for a useful redemption, although it makes sense to collect them just in case.

Membership is FREE.  You can sign up via this page of their website.   The general Pestana home page is here.