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Excellent Groupon deal for DragonPass – a cheap way to use Plaza Premium lounge in T5

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A very interesting Groupon deal has come up which will get you into the new Plaza Premium lounge in BA’s Heathrow Terminal 5 for just £19, and just £16 for further visits.

Let’s take a step back first for some background …..

If you do not have airline status or are not travelling in Business or First Class, the only way to get airport lounge access (without paying steep walk-up prices) is via membership of a lounge club.

The three major lounge access cards are:

Priority Pass (buy outright here via a generous Black Friday discount or free with Amex Platinum)

Lounge Club (two free visits per year for Amex Preferred Rewards Gold cardholders) and

LoungeKey (for MasterCard World Elite cardholders, eg HSBC Premier)

These are all owned by the same company, Collinson Latitude.  Whilst there are some differences between the lounges available across the three Collinson Latitude products, the similarities are far greater.

DragonPass is the only independent group offering airport lounge access cards.  It is not connected with Collinson.  This has allowed it to cut some interesting deals which are not available with the three Collinson products.

Here are some interesting London examples which are NOT available with Priority Pass or Lounge Club:

Exclusive DragonPass offers at Heathrow:

In Terminal 5 and Terminal 2, you can use the Regus Express business centre lounge in Arrivals

In Terminal 5, you can use the new Plaza Premium departures lounge 

In Terminal 3, you can use the No 1 Lounge in departures (this is in Priority Pass but not Lounge Club)

You get dining discounts – but no freebies – at The Prince of Wales (T4), Giraffe (T3, T5), Comptoir Libonais (T4), The Curator (T3), Apostrophe (T4), Wonder Tree (T2), Market Gardener (T3)

Exclusive DragonPass offers at Gatwick:

In South Terminal, you can use the Regus Express business centre lounge in Arrivals

You can get dining discounts – but no freebies – at Nicholas Culpepper (North), Giraffe (South), Garfunkels (North), Wonder Tree (South), Apostrophe (South), Eat (North), Armadillo (North), Shake-a-Hula (North), Comptoir Libonais (North), Joe’s Coffee House (South)

Obviously DragonPass will also get you into most of the ‘usual suspect’ lounges which Priority Pass can also access such as Aspire and No 1 Lounges sites.

You can search the DragonPass lounge directory here.

What does a DragonPass card cost?

The standard prices for a DragonPass card are listed here (toggle to £ in the menu bar):

£68 gets you one lounge visit, with future visits and guests charged at £16

£128 gets you eight lounge visits, with future visits and guests charged at £16

£268 gets you unlimited lounge visits, with guests charged at £16

However, at the moment there is a very attractive deal available via Groupon.

The Groupon deal – save 57%

Click here for the offer.

Via Groupon, you can buy a 1-year DragonPass card for just £29 instead of £68.

If you do not have a Groupon account already, code NEW50 should take a further £10 off if this is your first order, taking your cost down to just £19.

This includes your first lounge visit for free.  Future visits plus guests, as per the above, will be charged at £16.

This is an excellent way of accessing the very impressive new Plaza Premium lounge in Heathrow Terminal 5 (see our coverage here and here and here.)   This lounge charges £40 on the door and the only other way in at present is by showing an American Express Platinum charge card.  It does NOT take Priority Pass, Lounge Club or LoungeKey.

Even if you only planned to make one visit to Plaza Premium in Terminal 5, this is £11 cheaper (£21 cheaper if you use the NEW50 code) than paying £40 on the door.  Future visits will save you £24 each time.  Given the cost of food and drink in the terminal, you won’t struggle to get £16 of value from a visit to Plaza Premium Terminal 5.

It is worth nothing that the lounge is incredibly quiet.  I have never seen a report which said it had more than 10 guests.  Unless it starts to accept Priority Pass, or until American Express starts to promote it to Platinum cardholders, I expect it to remain a haven of solitude!

If you want to buy, the Groupon link for a cheap DragonPass is here. 

Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2024)

Here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum instead.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Category

General

Comments (87)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • JamesB says:
    26 Nov26 November 07:19

    Missed a trick here, should be closer to £13. Will leave the challenge to TRH1 to spot the deal and update it…

    The minute the other blogs pick up on this post Plaza Premium at T5 will become as bad as the rest of the lounges.

    • the real harry1 says:
      26 Nov26 November 08:10

      heh heh!

      all I’ll add at the moment is that one very interesting advantage DP has is that you can load up additional passes @ £16 on the app – and main cardholder can bring in guests, I don’t think there is a limit on numbers – so great for families

      • JamesB says:
        26 Nov26 November 09:27

        I knew you’d get it quick lol…and to be fair that wasn’t around when you first highlighted the deal 🙂

      • JamesB says:
        26 Nov26 November 10:20

        Yes, good point, when I’m in CW I will try closing my eyes and telling myself I am in an Etihad apartment 🙂

      • the real harry1 says:
        26 Nov26 November 12:13

        for clarity: this means guests cost £16 each – but you only need 1 DP card

    • TripRep says:
      26 Nov26 November 09:26

      JamesB, feel free to click on my username and then my email to send me the deal, looks like it could also be useful for my Bali trip, I see Brian Kelly is currently there s the volcano bubbles….

      • JamesB says:
        26 Nov26 November 09:34

        TRH just commented it. When are you going to Bali? Airlines are now on alert due to volcanic ash. Going by the annual smoke problem, it would not be a surprise if it were to be a potential issue as far north as southern Thailand.

  • Purplefleece says:
    26 Nov26 November 07:35

    Thank you. I just bought this. You have to persist with getting groupon to accept the code NEW50. Having set up a new Groupon account, it didn’t work. It only worked once I followed this link with the discount code: https://www.hotukdeals.com/vouchers/groupon.co.uk

    • Rob says:
      26 Nov26 November 10:25

      Should appear as a pop up when you click through to Groupon – that’s where I found it.

  • Graham Walsh says:
    26 Nov26 November 07:59

    Wonder how long before they join the masses? I guess they will have to, to make it financially viable. Maybe they are using this as a soft launch until the new year?

    Probably the best food I’ve had in a public lounge in LON airports using PP or Amex to gain entry. Never been in the Airline lounge so probably not a great comparison.

    • callum says:
      26 Nov26 November 10:35

      The Plaza lounge in Terminal 2 had amazing food. When I asked the attendant which dishes were vegetarian, they got the chef who insisted on going and making a fresh dish just for me (even though quite a few of the options were already vegetarian).

      Granted it was really quiet and you can’t count on quite that level of service, but that’s by far the best lounge experience I’ve ever had!

  • Ariel says:
    26 Nov26 November 08:06

    The link to redeem takes you to https://redeem.dragonpassuk.com/Lounge/A10047/London-Heathrow-Airport which doesn’t have the lounge in terminal 5 listed yet.

    • the real harry1 says:
      26 Nov26 November 08:17

      that’s true – but Plaza Premium definitely admits DP – might need a phone call until they update the lounge menu

    • john says:
      26 Nov26 November 16:52

      I have the same issue. Have you managed to redeem T5 Airside without a phone call? The air-side DP lounge has been open for a while now, how difficult it is to add it to the website? /sigh/ I assume I can add a guest for the extra fee when I redeem? or is this another phone-call?

      These “deals” are a lot of hassle. Why not simply email DP membership details immediately with an automated email, it’s not like we are somehow magically back in the 1980s or something.

  • JamesR says:
    26 Nov26 November 08:17

    OT – Im currently applying for a mortgage with Virgin Money… does anyone know if there is some way of earning flying club miles out of this??

  • Andrew says:
    26 Nov26 November 08:27

    No Bits today but £30 off a £100 spend at Harvey Nichols has popped up on Amex offers this morning.

    • johnny_c-l says:
      26 Nov26 November 15:30

      Thanks, got it on my Gold credit card.

      • Waribai says:
        26 Nov26 November 20:52

        Thanks. Added this on both our cards. It says not valid for the purchase of gift cards. I guess this means online (i.e. 3rd party involved) rather than instore?

        • the real harry1 says:
          26 Nov26 November 20:56

          you can always buy gift cards instore & get the credit, the till doesn’t know the difference

          online probably works fine as well – not tested

        • Rob says:
          26 Nov26 November 21:20

          Yup. I bought a £100 Harrods card instore last week and triggered the £30.

        • Nick says:
          27 Nov27 November 22:15

          @rob. Where did u see the Harrods offer?

          I did it last year (on 8 cards) but nothing recently at all?

  • Tracey says:
    26 Nov26 November 08:33

    Worth noting that some (paid) bank accounts include Priority Pass. We have a joint bank account with NatWest that gives us each free entry to PP lounges plus guests at £15 each.

  • Love2Travel says:
    26 Nov26 November 08:37

    OT: Have an offer on Amex Platinum for £20 back when you spend £100 on Costco Wembley but then another one for £20 back when you spend £150 at Costso. Will they both work if I spend £150 at Costco Wembley?

    • the real harry1 says:
      26 Nov26 November 09:06

      they could – I had 3x £5 statement credit offer on Esso £50 spend – sometimes I got £15, sometimes £10

      stacking may work but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t & your subsequent phone call to CS may or may not help, I never bothered to make any calls when I got just £10 as likely to disappoint

    • David says:
      26 Nov26 November 09:12

      The second one you mention is, I suspect based upon my offers, for costco.co.uk – i.e. the website. So I’d expect no.

      • Love2Travel says:
        26 Nov26 November 09:20

        I will double check but I vaguely remember store or online in T&C’s.

        • Alan says:
          26 Nov26 November 22:21

          The standard 150 one that I think most (everyone?) has is for online from what I remember.

    • Graham Walsh says:
      26 Nov26 November 12:14

      I got £20 off £150 spend at Costco on my Plat card. Obviously know I don’t leave there without spending that amount.

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