Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Craig and team are amazing. Never let's us down. We have again given DialAFlight recommendation to people who we met whilst travelling
Air India, despite its quite recent privatisation, is simply awful in every way. I was at Gatwick for 11 hours , with zero information about what was happening. Apparently the previous two Air India flights to Kochi were cancelled. All very stressful, but no fault of DAF!
There is a great deal of reassurance in knowing that your trip has been arranged by people who really know what they are doing. And that you are not just abandoned to the anonymous machinery of an airline that doesn't really care, in spite of all their rubbish claims about caring! Also that if something goes wrong you can get advice with a telephone call that is actually answered!
Although my baggage was lost from Dubai to London Gatwick I was able to speak to DialAFlight and ask for guidance on how to process the forms to reclaim my baggage. This they did readily which was a comfort at the time. You'll be glad to hear I now have my lost baggage!
Archie was brilliant - sorted everything out. Will definitely be using you guys and recommending to friends
Great service, especially from Ray Taylor.
Zoe Lane is an excellent travel agent.
It's not until something goes wrong with your travel plans that you realise the benefits of booking with them. After sitting on the plane at Gatwick for a couple of hours our flight was cancelled due to a technical issue. At 11pm there aren't that many people in the airport to help. Fortunately a call to DialAFlight's emergency phone line had me talking to Korinna within seconds. She was able to see there were no flights from Gatwick the following morning but there were spaces on the Heathrow flight and she changed our booking to this flight. She also re-arranged our connecting flight for Dubai to Delhi. All this whilst my husband was trying to talk to the airline's customer call centre who were saying they couldn't do anything as the flight hadn't been officially cancelled! A big thanks to Korinna for her help.
Efficient and helpful
No hitches on the way despite the potential for this to happen. Radisson Blue Hotel in Connaught Place excellent service and very convenient for shopping and restaurants.
Always very helpful and a pleasure to book with.
Other than the changes with the flights everything else was great
Amazing customer care
Excellent service
None. Good service
Alfie was very helpful, as usual and ensured all went smoothly
You didn't have to rearrange a flight home for me after a last minute international flight cancellation on this holiday, as you did on the last, but it was so good to know that - far from home - you were there to help me should I find myself stranded. Thank you so much for being there.
Excellent service and they were there for me when I needed assistance. Will definitely use again.
Always had good customer service from Michelle
Flight suggestions worked really well
All perfect!
Everything was handled promptly, professionally and it delivered an experience in India that was everything we hoped for. Great to have a team that were readily available to support us in both the planning and execution! Particular call-out for Brody Letchfield who was our main contact and ensured that, through liaison with Tamarind Global on the ground in India, everything ran smoothly
Connecting flight from Heathrow was delayed because of fog in Delhi, causing us to miss the connection to Goa. Seven hour wait for the next flight.
Great service yet again
Brody once again has provided excellent service and planned our holiday to perfection
Edward Scudder is a star - above and beyond. Quality service
Absolutely seamless holiday to Goa with all the flights booked with Rosie at DialAFlight Thanks again
As always, excellent service especially by Gino. If only BA could learn a thing or two from you about customer service.
Raphael was very helpful throughout the entire process, from initial booking to just before departure
Aiden is great and always most helpful as are all your team!
Frankly, I was at the bottom of the learning curve when it came to Tampa. I had heard of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the local football team, but that was about it. Most British visitors to Florida make a bee-line for Orlando and Miami.
But the old pecking order is changing fast. That's probably why Virgin Atlantic, scenting a winner, is now offering direct flights to Tampa. Parts of the city are run down; public transport is pretty basic. Tampa has been up, down, up again, down again, like one of the rollercoasters in Busch Gardens, the family theme park to the north of the city centre.
But its overall trajectory is emphatically up. I stayed for three nights at the spanking new JW Marriott hotel, in the heart of Tampa, and had a blast.
The city combines the dynamism of 21st-century America with just a hint of old-fashioned Southern charm. It is quite a cocktail - and Floridians love their cocktails.
All around the sunlit bay, I unearthed parks and museums, terrific bars and restaurants, quirky neighbourhoods and, best of all, a wealth of history.
In its heyday, Tampa was known as Cigar City, thanks to Vicente Ybor, a Spanish born entrepreneur who moved here in the 19th century, bought up swampland, then lured thousands of Cuban migrant workers to join him. Soon Ybor City, as the area became known, was turning out more cigars than anywhere else on the planet. No longer, alas.
But I would not have missed Ybor City for anything. Like Little Italy in New York, or the French Quarter in New Orleans, it encapsulates the American Dream - beautiful but fragile - in perfect miniature.
After disembarking from a rickety old streetcar, I soon found myself in a rabbit warren of scruffy streets, some overrun with chickens, some featuring bars and businesses, both weird and wonderful. 'Save a horse, ride a cowboy,' read one sign. 'The only shop in Tampa where death and dysfunction dance a graceful ballet,' boasted another, with dusty skeletons in the window.
Should I risk it? Or play safe and visit the more sedate-looking J. C. Newman Cigar Factory and Museum? I played safe. I am scared of skeletons.
Newman is not just a world renowned company, but the last operational cigar manufacturer in Tampa. Watching highly skilled workers cut tobacco and hand-roll cigars with such loving care was a revelation.
Vicente Ybor wanted to build a community, not just churn out cigars. The 19th-century migrant workers were well housed, got a good education and, after work, met at a Cuban club, of which a local guide gave me a tour. It was built on a palatial scale, with a ballroom fit for a king.
Lunch beckoned - and what a lunch. The family-run Columbia restaurant has been a fixture in Ybor City since 1905. I have never had Spanish food of this calibre outside of Spain. Unable to decide between the grilled snapper and the shrimp and crabmeat casserole, I had both and was soon whinnying for more. Olé!
If Ybor City evokes Tampa past, Hyde Park Village, across the bay, embodies its future.
It's a substantial urban development, less than ten years old, beside a much older residential area - the sleepy pre-war Tampa of shady streets, rocking chairs on porches and tattered Stars and Stripes fluttering overhead.
There are no rocking chairs in Hyde Park Village because everyone is on the move: joggers, dog walkers, teenagers on electric scooters, friends snatching a coffee before repairing to their laptops. The village has already become a magnet for young people working in the creative industries. They hang out in shared work spaces and, after hours, meet at the sort of bars where everyone knows everyone else and the cocktails flow like water.
Want to watch an arthouse movie in a funky bistro? Here's your chance. Or eat excellent Italian food in stylish surroundings? Look no further than Timpano, another humdinger of a restaurant.
For lovers of museums and galleries, the new Tampa Riverwalk is another must, linking a string of visitor attractions, from the vibrant Tampa Museum of Art to the Henry B. Plant Museum, an oasis of tranquillity.
I had brunch at the nearby Oxford Exchange, a much-loved Tampa institution. Part cafe, part shop, the Exchange is a lovingly crafted shrine to books. They even present your bill discreetly folded into a dusty old novel. Class.
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On my last morning, I had breakfast in Goody Goody, a retro American diner, then took a mini powerboat out into the bay.
The views were so thrilling that I nearly disturbed a nesting pelican just 50 yards from the general hospital.
My final port of call was Sparkman Wharf. Millennials in shorts and T-shirts sipped craft beer in refurbished shipyard crates, soaked up the sun and yakked about baseball, love and life without a care in the world.
It was hard to drag myself away to catch my plane home.
But isn't that true of all great cities? They leave you wanting more.
First published in the Daily Mail - November 2022
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