CaroFos

I'm poised to 'let go' of two J Avios seats to SEZ. Not sure if 'Drop and Catch' ever works but as availability is next to zero for this destination I'm happy to give it a go for anyone interested.. dates 2 - 10th June. Please PM if you want to investigate the possibility.

On that note - does anyone know IF they go back into inventory how long it takes? i.e. is it instantaneous or might it take a while?

teledude

I dont think from memory they will go back into the reward bucket....

UKtravelbear

there is no guarantee they would go back into inventory and if they did when they would. Yes it could be instant but it could be 3 days!

Deckard

So was it the destination or the difficulty with accommodation that swung it? Still looking forward to our August trip though the 750€ transfers for 2 is still an ouchio

CaroFos

Actually the Labriz is selling at £230 p night which is a bit of a steal (although the transfers are a killer!) .. plus there's loads of great little self-catering places available,,,, but a project I'm working on has now moved back by two weeks which has actually been the deciding factor.. :-(

Deckard

Wow my Hilton point redemption now feels massively devalued! Oh well we get a Diamond discount on HB so it’s not all bad. Wonder if I can get the points back and pay cash

corporate-wage-slave

I must admit I gasped somewhat when I saw the rates at the Hilton on the Seychelles - I ended up at the Doubletree and would happily stay there again. However a bit of playing around with part-pay / part Points gave me something like 0.7c per Hilton Point (which is quite good under their revenue system) and minimised the advanced cash payment that seems inevitable.

More information on Seychelles here:
New BA Routes 2018: Victoria, Seychelles (SEZ)
It's not cheap!

For the OP, sorry to hear about this, I hope you get another opportunity. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing what happens to the availability, it may become available immediately / a few days, or it may never come back to anyone else. BA have put the two / four seats available as per their offer, and that's as far as the bargain goes.

gnomeza

Just returned last week. Beware if you're booking self-catering or Airbnb as your first accommodation that Seychelles have tightened up their already Draconian tourist accommodation policies. Every single host has to be licensed and on their list. If your accommodation isn't, they'll give you a bit of a hard time.

CaroFos

good advice.. thank you. What was the weather like?

CaroFos

Yes the double tree looks nice ... but was actually more expensive than the Labriz for our dates - although the latter is now back up to Euro 365! the prices do seem to move about a lot but hopefully you will feel better now DECKARD? :-) .... also just found the JA Enchanted for Half Board for about 4.3K with Pool villa - apparently minibar stocked with wines and champagne replenished daily so actually would be a good deal?? Urgh - so tempting... esp as qualify for the honeymoon offer.. work always seems to get in the way!

Brighterside

My transfers for our upcoming holiday are 69Euros for the car transfer (up to 4 paxs) in each direction and 145 per person return for the boat transfer which doesn't add up to 750 ubless you were using the helicopter which is 638 in each direction from SEZ. Have noticed that air/ferry transfers from mahe to Praslin are virtually the same price for non-residents.

gnomeza

Mostly high twenties, low thirties but felt a lot hotter thanks to very high humidity. One of the wettest Aprils they've had in years according to the locals.

Two thunderstorms with heavy rain during our 10 days on the ground but these were both after sunset.

Low cloud on the horizon every evening so no sunset over the sea.

Completely still except for one windy afternoon towards the end which happened to coincide with our ferry from Praslin back to Mahé. Steady stomach required. (If I ever return it'll be to yacht charter during the windier season which, I think, is just beginning.)

Otherwise plenty of beach time in hot, hot sun.
If you're snorkeling I highly recommend a rash vest and factor 30+ on the backs of your knees!

orbitmic

On that specific point, quite a few threads on this. Effectively, you should think of award tickets, once bought, as just tickets on a given bucket which is very low down the pecking order of buckets.

So let's imagine that someone manages to book two of the cheapest revenue at a time inventory was Y9 B9 H9.... N9 V9 G9 Q9 04.

A couple of weeks later, their plans change and they change their tickets thereby releasing the two O bucket tickets that they purchased. However, by that time, the availability has drastically changed to Y9 B6 H0... N0 V0 G0 Q0 O0. The release of the two O tickets won't mean that suddenly two O tickets will reappear either on their own (… N0 V0 G0 Q0 O2 which is impossible) or coherently with other buckets (H2... N2 V2 G2 Q2 O2). What will happen instead is that maybe the availability will become Y9 B8 H0 or Y9 B8 H2 everything else 0. Exactly the same with award tickets. In particular, if you are down to V0 in economy or to R0 in business, the default outcome is definitely that your cancelling your award tickets will not lead to any award space becoming available.

Often1

When tickets are cancelled, the space goes back into inventory. Not only is there no guarantee that the space will become available immediately or ever again in a redemption bucket, but there is no guarantee that the space will ever be sold. Could be that BA's RM/IM algorithm is predicting an overbooking turning into an oversale. In order to avoid the latter, BA won't release the seats yet or at all and thus the flight will show as sold out even though you have just returned seats to inventory.

Deckard

My bad. Went back and rechecked the correspondence and it's 2 * 70 EUR + 2 * 125 EUR - hadn't twigged that it was return! So 390 EUR. I got very confused because they originally referred to the ferry transfer as a "coach boat transfer" so I kept asking why I needed a car if I had a coach.