Centurion Lounge Review-São Paulo (GRU)

Dust off your platinum card and head on up(stairs) to the Centurion Lounge São Paulo (GRU), to experience middling luxury with a warehouse feel.

Our Trip – Centurion Lounge Review-São Paulo (GRU)

We arrived at the São Paulo Centurion Lounge after a whirlwind, three-month tour of Brazil.

The Facts – Centurion Lounge Review-São Paulo (GRU)

To enter the Centurion Lounge, you will need a Platinum AmEx or better. The lounge is a bit tricky to find, as it shares a mezzanine with a couple of other large lounge spaces, but if you pay attention to the signage, you will eventually arrive.

The Space – Centurion Lounge Review-São Paulo (GRU)

The São Paulo Centurion Lounge is large, but still easily swallowed by the size of the airport terminal. It feels a little like a pop-up experience in the back of a Home Depot, with echoey acoustics and lots of empty space. There is little to nothing warm about it, and, contrary to the classy, if corporate, designs of the Centurion Charlotte, or Centurion Miami, it feels half-done.

There are plenty of seating options scattered somewhat haphazardly around the space, include desks and tables upon which you can work. The blare flourescents of the terminal are sure to wring the productivity out of you like a squeezed limão.

The lounge does offer showers, though when we visited, the wait was close to an hour and we almost missed our turn. The internet was decent by Brazilian standards, at around 25 mbps, which would have been sufficient for video calls, if not for the echoing cacophony that drowns out even a man’s most private thoughts.

The Food and Drink – Centurion Lounge Review-São Paulo (GRU)

To describe the food in one word: hilarious. The lounge offered Covid-safe, plastic wrapped fare, but it was nothing to write home about. Unlike the La Valette Lounge in Malta, they did not offer decent plastic-wrapped food, but stuck to uninspired, honeydew-rich fruit bowls. The “vegan menu” of iceberg lettuce bowls was particularly funny.

Alcohol options were also simple, limited to beer and wine with cocktails available for an extra charge. This was the first Centurion we’ve been in that didn’t offer cocktails gratis.

Final Grades