Pestana to manage the Autodrome's luxury hotel and apartments

Pestana is to manage the hotel at the Algarve’s International Autodrome when the five star unit opens in the second half of 2015.

When Parkalgar was forced into applying for an ultimately successful Special Revitalisation Process to stave off bankruptcy, €10 million was set aside to pay local building company Bemposta to complete the stalled hotel project.

Bemposta was owed €10.3 million before Parkalgar’s financial restructuring and was still owed €10.3 million afterwards when every other creditor took a haircut but the €10 million it received to complete the hotel seems to have been spent on construction.

The relationship between Parkalgar and Bemposta with directors owning shares in each company may explain the preferential creditor treatment given to the building company.

Pestana Group now is forming a partnership with Parkalgar SA which owns the racetrack, currently leased to Portugal Capital Ventures which was wheeled in to help rescue the autodrome project when insolvency threatened.

Pestana Group is happy that they have a new hotel, potentially with just under 200 rooms, and will open the first 75 of then when the gardens are done and all looks presentable.

Pestana is sufficiently experienced to have cut a good deal and will have identified the market segment for this site, probably the corporate incentive market as the hotel has the necessary meeting rooms and other facilities to appeal, despite being a long way from the sea and the Algarve’s nightlife.

The hotel will rightly expect to be full on race days and the motor manufacturers and developers that use the track to test engines and tyres should ensure a minimum level of trade.  

Pestana also will be managing the adjacent blocs of luxury apartments, 170 of them, some of which have a chequered history.

Many of the Vista de Falcao and Vista das Ondas apartments were marketed by a UK based company called Saffron VIP run by Paul Staines, his girlfriend Gerry Jones and her son Ben Jones who, when the company rather conveniently folded, seem not to have passed on apartment investors’ deposits to Parkalgar – nor did these deposits appear in Saffron VIP’s accounts.

There also was a guaranteed bounus added to the deposit on return as part of the deal offered by Saffron, a deal which Parkalgar’s Paulo Pinheiro denied all knowledge of when later it was time for investors to claim their deposit and bonus from Parkalgar. (See ad below)

Paulo Pinheiro is of course pleased that the hotel is nearing completion and that a prestigious company has taken it on after Radisson, the hotel group first planning to manage the unit, pulled out when the crisis hit.

Pestana’s regional manager Pedro Lopes commented to Sul Informaçao today that the hotel was the missing piece in the autodrome jigsaw, "the racetrack complex, the kart track, the apartments, a potential technology park - the hotel was the key missing piece," adding that until now people visiting racing events had to stay in Quinta do Lago or Vilamoura, miles away.

Paulo Pinheiro may now be seeing light at the end of a long and dark tunnel for Parkalgar and he needs now to ensure the apartment investors are treated properly as per the ad below from Saffron VIP which was marketing the apartments with his full knowledge.

The opening of the hotel under the unblemished Pestana brand is an achievement for Parkalgar but it still has much work to do to re-establish its reputation within the business community, especially the 288 business creditors who were forced into taking a significant loss and extended payment terms as part of the Special Revitalisation Process.