Hospitality Accommodations

we have just received our final travel documentation and as our Seabourn arranged flight leaves Athens airport at 22:00 it states in the information that if your flight leaves between 15:00 and 18:00 you will receive a meal voucher for a restaurant or hotel or after 18:00 you will receive hospitality accommodations. You will receive further details when on board the ship.

So. - you know what the question is. Has anyone made use of this in Athens and what and where are the hospitality arrangements. Will they feed us or will we have to sort ourselves?

Many thanks in advance.

This is what lincslady posted a while back but just wondered if anyone had any experience from this year?

'In recent times, if your flight is after 3 but before 6 you will be given lunch at a hotel, if after 6 it will be a day room at a hotel, obviously with the necessary transfers. I think the latter is the more likely for you - personally, we have preferred the included lunch!!

I wonder if SB still use the Grande Bretagne; old fashioned and pricey but we loved it, both for staying and a meal in the lobby area, and breakfast on the top floor with lovely views and a fabulous breakfast buffet. It certainly used to be the SB choice of hotel a few years ago.'

Techno - when I read your post I was tempted to reply, but have no recent knowledge, so refrained! I do hope you will be at the Grande Bretagne again; last time we were there (apart from the lovely breakfast) we had - a sin I know - a club sandwich and wine in the lobby area. We ordered two, and it was far too much! Not very Greek, but delicious and filling. Hope they put you there again.

Techno, did SB arrange your flights from Manchester airport? It's my closest.

I've never used SB air but did use SS, for shorthaul only, back when I liked Silversea ;p. The flight routings they gave me seemed to be far more complex than they needed to be - always a connection via LHR, even though there were direct non stop flights from Manchester, and a tight connection involving different terminals.

So, if you're flying from Manchester (or Birmingham) what sort of route have SB booked for you?

Isklaar

We arranged our own flights out to Barcelona from Manchester as Seabourn's only option was via London (so we are flying out with Monarch) the return from Athens was booked with Aegean via Seabourn when they were doing their £99 option and we fly from Athens to Manchester. We could have chosen the Easyjet option independently but it also leaves late and we would not have had the transfer and complementary 'accomodation' wherever that may be :D and of course we have the beloved bike to transport so I didn't want to risk connecting flights in case it went missing ;p

One of the nightmares I had with Silversea was to Barcelona booked via London. I had to fly in on the day of departure, they booked me on a lunchtime flight to Barca - it was due in at 2.30pm and the ship was leaving at 5pm. I still get palpitations when I remember the 50 minute connnection at Heathrow, had to get from T5 to T3 in that time. Even though the flights were fine and I made it in time I will never, ever do that again.

You've definitely done the right thing considering you have the bike too.

That's a good price on your one way from Athens.

I think I will ask my TA to get information about flights from Seabourn next time I'm booking, certainly worth giving them a chance to see what they come up with but maybe more useful for the longhaul trips.

Thanks!

It would be the bargain of the year if your £99 included a dayroom at the Grande Bretagne.

A word to the wise - we had a flight with Aegean booked through Seabourn a couple of years ago, and discovered at the last minute that it did not include other than hand baggage. Recommend you check this out. We managed to pay extra for our luggage, which Seabourn covered after we said we had not been told about this.

lincslady,

these things still happen with Seabourn!

Only after we asked our TA to book flights to/from Rome for the upcoming cruise on Encore did Seabourn bother to point out that they had not mentioned two things: the cheap flight only included hand luggage and you had to pay for seat reservations.

If we had known this in advance, we would not have booked through them (that is the Rotterdam office).

I do not expect many Seabourn guests to travel with hand luggage only...

Lincslady - it is only hand baggage - the travel agent checked when we asked about booking the bike on, so I have already booked a suitcase each and the bike is 'reserved'.

Well no one has got back to say any different to the Grande Bretagne and the precruise info definitely specifies accomodation so I shall wait with bated breath in case anyone else experienced the later flight and can say where we will end up.

We ended up booking a room in the Sofitel across from the airport last year which Seabourn kindly picked up as we were supposed to be flying from Istanbul ;) we docked on Saturday and the only flight home was on Sunday.

Techno, if this helps...Seabourn offered us either the Grande Bretagne or the King George in Athens for our pre-cruise stay. I believe we will embark the same day you disembark in Athens. I see your cruise is still not selling well. Not sure why, meanwhile our 14 day itinerary looks more popular [emoji57]. We almost booked the same one as you but opted for the itinerary with more Greek island ports.

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Sunprince - yes there does seem to be a lot of suites left. We were almost booked on your cruise but didn't reserve a suite and when we had made our minds up, everything in our price bracket had sold out :D

Which hotel have you gone for?

How does one tell if there are a lot of suites left?

Well my travel agent is showing availability at all levels apart from V4 and if you go into Seabourns own booking system it is also showing availability.

Sunprince - yes there does seem to be a lot of suites left. We were almost booked on your cruise but didn't reserve a suite and when we had made our minds up, everything in our price bracket had sold out :D

Which hotel have you gone for?

We booked a small hotel in Plaka called AVA. We have stayed there before and we opt for a suite with a large terrace with a great view of the Acropolis on one side and Hadrian's Arch on the other. We didn't want to stay in the main square where the other two hotels are located.

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How does one tell if there are a lot of suites left?

You can just go to Seabourn website and click "reserve" for the cruise you are interested in and then pretend to do an actual booking by selecting you own suite. It will bring up what is available to select, deck by deck.

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Thank you, Sunprince, I never realised you could do that! I was always too nervous to click "Reserve"!