Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
As always a great experience from start to finish. Big thanks to Mason for making everything such a simple process. Here’s looking to the next one
As is usually the case with the travel that DialAFlight organise for me, this was a complex itinerary. On this occasion the team went over and above to sort out a hiccup with one the flights I was taking. We did this, long distance by email, and the team were very quick with their responses, sorting the problem out very satisfactorily. I'd never hesitate to recommend them.
Kieran has been amazing!
Everything was planned to precision and went smoothly. An exceptional holiday and service provided
Cannot fault this company or Jackson and his team. Brilliant, thank you.
BA flight home was delayed and I didn't get the seat I had booked and paid for, however this is something I have to take up with BA . As far as DialAFlight is concerned there is nothing whatsoever that you could have done any better than you did. Thank you for your help in organising my trip.
Everything was fine - have used DialAFlight on lots of occasions and will definitely be using you again
Good hotels in great locations. Thank you.
I would like to thank Natalie for all the help she provided in helping to organise my trip to Hong Kong. She provided all the information I needed and kept me updated as the departure date approached. Excellent service.
Fantastic service as always
Great holiday and professional service throughout. Now looking to book the next one!
I have been using your company for over 10 yrs and have no regret. Nice staff and good approach with listening skills.
Thank you Connie
Stan Castle does a great job as always
Fabulous holiday, beautiful resort, perfect in every way. Could not wish for better. Thank you Gareth and DialAFlight
Elliot was fab at sorting our trip
Michael very helpful
Seamless arrangements. Thank you
Thank you for your valued service once again. I always feel assured by DialAflight wherever I go and will continue to book with your company - one of true quality.
Once again Darryll at DialAflight and his team delivered what they promised. The flight, hotel and all other information were spot on.
Perfect. 5 stars
I had a wonderful time. Brought back so many memories. Thank you
Everything went well. I can recommend Blue Beach Hotel Waduwa. A lovely room with large balcony overlooking the garden and pool areas and wonderful sea views. Flights were OK but long journey. Thanks to Patrick and Liam
Saf, as ever, was amazing. Available, responsive, dealt with everything even our last minute room requests on a Sunday! Thank you so much!
Advise any clients leaving from BHX that they need plenty of time to get up to departure gates and through security. It was a shambles there on the day that I flew out.
Hassle free, thank you.
Couldn’t have been any better. Usual high standard. More than happy to recommend to anyone.
Excellent trip, everything went to plan. Thank you to Oscar!
5 stars
Nothing was a problem. We bonded through great rapport. Excellent service
Some might remember a TV show of seven years ago called The Young Ones (not to be confused with the comedy series of the Eighties), in which six celebrities in their 70s and 80s attempt to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.
They spent their time in a country house decked out as a 1970s time capsule. The idea was to transport them back to their heyday - they walked on shag pile carpet and watched Crossroads, sipping Dandelion & Burdock, to see if it improved their ailing health and failing memories.
The six were cricket umpire Dickie Bird, dancer Lionel Blair, newsreader Kenneth Kendall, radio presenter Derek Jameson and actresses Sylvia Syms and Liz Smith - and it seems that taking them back to a world where everything was strictly 1975 had a miraculous effect. The experiment, particularly the part involving shag pile carpets, was very successful and they did feel younger.
I mention this because I met a very clever man called Bengt in Bequia, a tiny island just a speedboat dash from Mustique, who is conducting a similar experiment. Bengt is the proud owner of the Bequia Beach Hotel, which is full of couples of a certain age congratulating other couples for being so much younger than all the other couples of almost certainly the same age.
Trapped in time
For Bengt, you see, has created a perfect time capsule. By the time you've checked into one of the 1930s colonial-style rooms with 1950s-style posters, and followed 1960s-style wooden signs to the bar and ordered your first Dark 'n' Stormy, you're already feeling 20 years younger.
It's not just the decor, agreeable though it is. Everything here exudes old-style charisma, a Pathé newsreel picture of how the Caribbean used to be before the big bucks and giant cruise liners steamed in.
There's nothing fusty about the Bequia Beach Club, but everything is as it should be. Charming open-air restaurant on the beach: check. Delicious fresh seafood: check. Friendly but unpushy staff: check. Secluded stretch of sand fringing a gently swelling ocean: check. Cool pool with mysterious rejuvenating powers: check. Friendly faces at the bar swapping rum-punchy gossip about how Carole Middleton put people's noses out of joint in Mustique: check.
The island, which hasn't changed much since Harold Macmillan stayed here (someone told me they'd read he came up with 'You've never had it so good' on the island) is proud of its Royal connections.
Princess Margaret once dropped anchor off Bequia. As a result there's a rather fetching beach named after her. A 30-minute stroll away is the capital, Port Elizabeth, a scruffily teeming one-street town packed with shops, markets and harbourside bars.
Forty minutes away by twin-prop plane is the five-star Coral Reef Club in Barbados, where we stayed for our second week. It, too, exudes old-school cool, although this time for very A-list guests.
Had they wished, the owners of this hotel could have adopted the Bequia naming policy and christened its beach after visiting royalty. Or you could now be staying in a Harold Pinter, Agatha Christie or Prince Harry suite. All have enjoyed the hospitality of the O'Hara family, who have owned the hotel since the 1950s.
But this is the kind of hotel where the rich, famous and we lesser mortals can drift in and out incognito.
No wonder Agatha Christie was inspired to write A Caribbean Mystery here.
There's still an air of exotic mystery about the place, as if a man in tennis whites might appear at any moment among the palms and confess to Miss Marple that yes, it was he who committed the heinous murder in the bougainvillea and he doesn't care who knows it.
Every room is high-spec and the restaurant is high-end. But Coral Reef hasn't lost sight of the good old days. You can bet every dry martini here is shaken, not stirred.
If you hanker after a nightclub, well, that's just a short car ride away - this is hip and happening Barbados after all. But at the Coral Reef it's more cocktails and cool crooners.
Family values
The Coral Reef Club is built on good old-fashioned family values. And that's down to the O'Haras. They may look as if they've stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue, with their brilliant white shirts and glossy good looks, but they are a very real sleeves-rolled-up presence in the hotel.
Matriarch Cynthia glides around the reception rooms and hosts an elegant cocktail party once a week, and sons Mark and Patrick patrol the restaurant.
This is not just their livelihood, it's their home, and you are made to feel like their guests, not just hotel guests.
First published in the Mail Online - February 2017
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