Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
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!
Thank you for your attentive services
My Montenegro guide was animated. 'You should have been here when this was part of Yugoslavia. It was a fine country and tourists loved it,' he said.
There's a word for those who share his view... 'Yugonostalgics', and they remember Josip Tito as a great leader, who ruled the country with a benevolent air and a successful PR campaign.
'I, too, remember Yugoslavia,' I told him, without elaborating.
My memories of pre-1980 Yugoslavia run more along the lines of cheap and nasty, concrete-clad, mass-market hotels aimed at Eastern Bloc tourists, unimaginative food and undrinkable wine.
There was bog-standard nightlife and exotic luxuries such as fiery slivovitz plum brandy, which gave you the mother of all hangovers; and Yugo cars for taxis, which made East Germany's Trabants seem like Ferraris.
It's very different now, as each of the former Yugoslav states strives to come up with new and inventive ways to attract tourists. Montenegro is right up there, with a curious mix of flashy super-yacht marinas and glitzy hotels, combined with good value seaside resorts.
The marina complex of Portonovi, on a 60-acre site on Boka Bay between Dubrovnik, in Croatia, and the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat, might just be the glitziest of them all when it opens next year. Look out for luxurious apartments, available for sale and rent, as well as a yacht club, spa and a new One&Only resort hotel, the first in Europe.
At the other end of the scale, and not in a bad way, is Ribarsko Selo, a rustic fish restaurant with just a handful of guest rooms, tucked away on the Lustica Peninsula between Miriste and Zanjice beach, where a bottle of Savina white wine costs 15 Euros.
Those in the know book the restaurant's sole harbourside apartment, with its own small pool, a favourite with visiting oligarchs in need of privacy. At just €150 a night for two, it's a bargain.
But there is also much in between these extremes in Montenegro. Its 620,000 people are fiercely proud of the independence they gained following the break-up of Yugoslavia, a process which began in 1991. The following year Serbia and Montenegro became an entity, under the name the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In 2003, it officially renamed itself Serbia and Montenegro and in 2006, after a referendum, Montenegro declared independence. It was officially named the Republic of Montenegro in 2007.
Its credentials as a forward-looking highly progressive country have been underlined since then by such achievements as being classified by the World Bank as an upper middle-income country, becoming a member of the UN, NATO, the World Trade Organization and the Council of Europe. Not to mention seeing many of its resorts gaining a definite air of high-end sophistication.
The town of Budva, for example, once with a whiff of mass market Spanish Costas about it, is now filled with atmospheric bars and restaurants in the shadow of the ramparts, and there's a crescent-shaped beach, too.
Even more spectacular is Kotor, with its high city walls, tiny alleys, churches and Italianate mansions, all a reminder of Montenegro's Venetian heritage. Visit in the early evening, after the cruise ships have rounded up their passengers, order something at an outside cafe, and bask in its beauty.
For real luxury, try the island of Sveti Stefan, once home to fishermen, whose atmospheric houses now serve as guest rooms for the Aman Sveti Stefan hotel, reached by a pedestrian causeway.
Following local advice, I checked out the resort of Herceg Novi, just along the coast, where the modern beach-side Palmon Bay Hotel and Spa provides a good base from which to explore the coast and the black mountains. Service is slickly efficient - not always the case in this part of the world - and rooms are excellent, if a touch clinical.
Heaven knows where Montenegro is heading. It might not know itself. For the rest of us, it's well worth visiting a place that's in such dramatic transition.
First published in the Mail Online - March 2018
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