Ever wanted to use points to get yourself to a private island? Now’s your chance.
There is currently a ton of standard award availability at the Waldorf Astoria Seychelles Platte Island, one of the more lusted-after new hotel properties of the last couple of years. Standard awards are available almost every day throughout 2025, including most 5-night blocks (meaning it will work for 5th-night free stays).
Those five night blocks can be even more useful since the Waldorf is currently offering complimentary air transfers on stays of six nights or longer between Mahe (where the Seychelles’ main airport is) and Platte Island through October 2025. That alone can shave another $1400 or so off the tab for two people. (h/t: OMAAT)
You can view award availability here, with the search being set for one night using flexible dates. At the time of writing this, effectively every month of 2025 is wide open for 130,000 points per night.
This could be a great use of Hilton free night certificates earned from the Hilton Aspire or Surpass credit cards. If you don’t have many free night certificates and/or want to stay a little longer, Hilton offers the 5th night free on award stays for anyone with Silver status or higher. When booking in five night increments, that reduces the 130,000 points per night cost to an average of 104,00 points per night…pretty good for a property that routinely costs $1500+ per night in cash.
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We visited in June 2024 and the property was basically empty. We saw about individual 15 guests over our 6 nights there, including who was there before us and arrived after us. Definitely a top quality resort, but I think they will struggle to fill the resort at the cash prices they are charging. Villas are amazing and you can tell they were taking hints from the WA Maldives in the design. It also leans very heavily into the natural eco-friendly angle, which is fine if that is your thing, but you won’t have beachfront/overwater villas similar to other properties in this price range. We enjoyed our time there, but in my opinion there are better Hilton locations for 100K-150K Hilton points/night.
Best points to use for flights?
I’ve used Avios on QR several times for the DOH-SEZ and return. I prefer to book one-way so as for any changes, you simply cancel the booking for a refund and make another. QR is complicated to get changes done if you book an award flight. Especially if you have already flown one-leg, and very especially if you are trying to make a second change (good luck with that). So, its better to make one-way bookings with them and if you need to change your flight cancel. If you follow that, you have a decent chance of a good experience, especially in economy. They have reliably refunded anything that I have canceled. Never saw a Q-Suites aircraft on that run and its a short flight (4-hours or so, if I recall). So, I think biz-class is a bit of a waste on that run unless you are coming in from a very long distance prior to getting to Doha and manage to get a deal on a multi-sector flight in biz-class.