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!
The former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, is likely to be heading to his favourite spot in the Lake District for his annual holiday. But his visit will not involve fell walking, munching on Kendal Mint Cake, or even dodging rain showers.
He spends his holidays in the Argentine Lake District in northern Patagonia, a two-hour flight south-west of the capital Buenos Aires. While the area is well known to his fellow countrymen, it's less so to international visitors. But with its stunning scenery of iridescent lakes, soaring mountains and thick forests, not to mention an increasingly generous exchange rate, this will inevitably change. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands is a big fan of the region too, but then she was born in Argentina, so she may be a little biased.
Visitors fly into San Carlos de Bariloche, a winter gateway for some of the best skiing in South America. But in January, the height of the southern summer when temperatures are regularly up into the 80s, people come to hike, bike and fly-fish.
Pick up a hire car and drive north for 90 minutes on Ruta 40 - Argentina's answer to Route 66 - which runs for more than 3,100 miles from the desolate pampas of Patagonia to the border with Bolivia.
The upmarket holiday town of Villa La Angostura makes a great base. Shrouded by woods and bordered by Lake Nahuel Huapi, with angular, wooden houses away from its main street, it wouldn't look out of place in the Swiss Alps.
This is the southern starting point for the Ruta de los Siete Lagos, or Road of the Seven Lakes, a stunning 62-mile drive to San Martin de los Andes. It takes a lot longer to complete this route than you might imagine due to the numerous diversions for photo stops of the rippling hills and mountains of the Andes that provide the border with Chile.
Want to take your hire car into the neighbouring country? It's possible if you confirm this at pick-up. Expect to pay a surcharge of about £30.
But who wants to be stuck behind a wheel the whole time? Like the wide open spaces of New Zealand or the Canadian Rockies, the point of being here is to get back to nature: to step out, fill your lungs and enjoy the great outdoors under skies that seem to go on for ever.
There are plenty of biking and hiking routes here, and one of the most scenic follows an hour-long boat ride from Villa La Angostura, put-put-putting along at a gentle pace and feeling the wind in your hair up on deck.
Disembark at the Arrayanes national park for a gentle seven mile walk back along the Quetrihue peninsula. It is said that the forest in the cartoon Bambi was based on this area after a visit by Walt Disney himself.
You'll share the well-maintained path with just a few others and although the trail isn't that undulating, you can stop regularly for water, chocolate, photos or just to listen to birdsong and soak it all in. There's a thick canopy of beech trees here, as well as colourful fuchsias, outcrops of bamboo and blankets of Chilean myrtle.
Hike from the town itself to look out over Lake Correntoso and to a 165ft-high waterfall, Cascada Inacayal. On another day you could drive for about 30 minutes to Lake Espejo Chico, turn off down a dirt track to a secret beach (actually it's signposted but not many people follow it), then enjoy a picnic of sandwiches bought in town and Quilmes beers that you can keep cool in the water.
There's a certain fragility to the landscape here that's hard to put your finger on, until you realise that about 25 miles due west lies the 7,335ft volcano Puyehue-Cordon Caulle, which last erupted 18 years ago, blanketing Villa La Angostura in a thick covering of ash. Luckily, she was silent on our visit.
Villa La Angostura is a pleasant town with a frontier feeling and the happiest, most tail-waggy packs of stray dogs you'll come across.
With the pound currently worth about 70 pesos, eating out is a steal and petrol is the equivalent of 60p a litre.
A year ago, the exchange rate was around 45 pesos, and even then things were a bargain.
Argentina is known for some of the most succulent steaks on the planet, and a meal of bife de chorizo or lomo (sirloin or fillet), plus some delicious pasty-like empanadas and an excellent bottle of malbec, will set you back about £35 for two.
On the main street, there are plenty of coffee shops, restaurants and bars. For souvenirs, take home sturdy leather belts, alfajores (biscuits) and jars of dulce de leche (caramel sauce), which Argentinians love almost as much as maté, a kind of bitter tea. They consume maté from a gourd with a metal straw, and constantly top up with flasks of hot water.
While this particular Lake District might be lacking in Beatrix Potter tea towels and gingerbread, it does certainly hold its own on another front. Almost half the immigrants to Argentina came from Italy, so gelato here is on a par with anything you'll find in Venice or Rome, especially if you're a fan of rich, unctuous chocolate flavours.
Just don't expect to see Kendal Mint Cake flavour on the menu any time soon.
First published in the Mail on Sunday - November 2019
More articles below...