Amex has FHR and Visa has its Luxury Hotel program, and it shouldn’t surprise you that Mastercard runs a similar hotel booking service too.
The service is called Mastercard Travel & Lifestyle, provided by TEN. You must validate your eligibility by entering the card number, and then if approved you could create an account to access more information. It’s unclear what cards are eligible as it’s likely down to the individual contracts between banks and Mastercard, but in general you need a premium card such as the World Elite.
Mastercard World Elite is no longer rare in the UK. I vaguely remember that HSBC Premier World Elite was participating, but it doesn’t work anymore, and I’m not sure if my memory is wrong or the partnership has been withdrawn. My Curve Metal doesn’t work either.
Anyway you should give your Mastercard a go. Finally my China-issued World Elite card works and I gained access to the platform. Similar to Amex they offer priority restaurant reservations and early access to event tickets, but I’ll focus on the hotel-booking part today.
If you perform a hotel search, you’ll see hotels with a green label indicating that they are part of the Mastercard Luxury Hotels collection:
Apologies for the Chinese text and confusing price in CNY – it seems to be bound by the card issuing country and I can’t switch the language or currency.
There are 37 labelled properties in London, and here are some rate / benefit examples:
Their database of room types seems quite messed up, which is very often inconsistent with what the hotels have on their end. However I don’t think it’s a big deal, and you should have an idea what the room type actually is anyway.
As you may have noticed, the benefits can be quite different from one property to the other. In fact if you are a veteran of the hotel games, you probably would know how it works at this point. Yes, unlike Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts, Mastercard doesn’t own its own program. Instead it acts as a travel agency which can book customers into individual hotel chains’ elite rates, such as:
- Hilton Impresario
- IHG Luxury & Lifestyle
- Marriott Stars & Luminous
- Hyatt Prive
I have talked briefly about such programs before. In general all such rates are on par with the Best Flexible Rate and earn points / night credits. In terms of benefits, they all come with room upgrade and late check-out, and on many occasions free breakfast and $50 or $100 on-property credit as well.
Sometimes these programs offer discount too which Mastercard should also be able to provide. For example, both Hilton Impresario and IHG Luxury & Lifestyle offer widely available 3-for-2 deals at the moment. Marriott on the other hand, offers 20% off for stays of three nights or longer at select properties.
You don’t pay anything to Mastercard. At the time of booking you need to provide a credit card as deposit, and then you’ll pay the hotel directly during your stay.
If you have access to the Mastercard Travel Services, I actually think it’s quite worthy of signing up. Its inclusion of so many hotel programs means it covers many more hotels than Amex FHR, and when there’s an offer like 3-for-2 it can be a really sweet deal. Note that you can’t book these rates without an agency – if you don’t have access to Mastercard Travel or similar platforms, you need to find a qualifying travel agent on Google and contact them, which obviously isn’t as easy or quick.
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