Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Great service and help during booking process. The entire trip went like clockwork. Many thanks to Jason.
Stevie was amazing. Very knowledgeable, friendly, prompt and called me when she said she would. Highly recommend
Very helpful and friendly staff and app kept us informed of delays. Excellent service - felt valued as a customer
No issues, all went ahead as planned. Jane did a really good job
Nothing was too much bother. Excellent communication..
Excellent communications and what feels like personal support gives you confidence that DialAFlight are genuinely there to help you get the best from your trip.
Cameron was just wonderful answering all my questions and putting me at ease with follow up calls. Great company and have passed on the wonderful service to friends Thank you for helping to make my holiday amazing!
Very helpful and friendly service. Great to be able to actually talk to someone! Many thanks to Reagan who was extremely helpful when I had a problem checking in online. Very reassuring and nothing too much trouble. Will definitely use DialAFlight in the future.
Harriet was very helpful and kept us updated all the time. We had a fabulous holiday and loved the app.
Brilliant service from Lloyd, Jack and their team. Thank you!
Courtney arranged everything for us and we felt we were in excellent hands throughout. It was very helpful to be able to ask questions regarding seat allocation on Qatar
Usual excellent service. Had a great time. Would go nowhere else to book my Australian holidays. Well done Ralph. DialAFlight is the best
Thank you so much, your customer service is excellent.
Very smooth trip. Thanks so much for all your help arranging flights. Kids first time in Australia and had a blast, really enjoyed the variety of places we travelled to.
You have been just brilliant and your assistance was invaluable. Staff polite, friendly and knowledgeable and great in an emergency situation.
Excellent trip, unfortunately luggage lost on return and still not received!
Gordon goes way and beyond every time
Very helpful indeed. Great organisation to deal with
I would not recommend breakfast at the Crowne Promenade Melbourne. Zero star rating from us.
The help was there when needed. All the information was well presented and given in plenty of time. It made this first time, flying solo on a long trip, feel very confident.
Daniel was very helpful when we needed to change our bookings to return to the UK. It was over the Easter weekend but he still kept communication going. Thanks for that
Everything OK till Dubai airport on way back. Total mess, no organisation, no help. The airport can’t deal with a crisis. Just pathetic.
Can’t fault the service I received by Graham and everything went according to plan. It was great to get a pre-flight call from him to ensure we had everything in place that we would need. As it happened, we hadn’t so it enabled us to get the missing documents. But I would not choose to fly Air Malaysia again. On the other hand, New Zealand Airways was outstanding. Probably the best flight I’ve ever had and I’ve had a lot.
Yet again excellent service from the team at DialAFlight. Will definitely use again.
As always, DialAFlight have been excellent in organising our flights to Australia. Jordan Fell has usually been our contact and is professional and friendly but all agents we have spoken to have been great AND the phone is answered within seconds….always a bonus.
As always Chloe and Lloyd were there to advise and reassure us when our original plans changed on our flights back from Australia
Just keep up the good work. Impossible to fault you.
All went very smoothly. When I phoned Ruby from Brisbane with a query about my flight home, she checked immediately and phoned me back and confirmed that all was in order. Very reassuring. I will definitely use DialAFlight again. Very grateful.
Leah Jessep is both knowledgeable and prompt in all her communication, many thanks.
It has always been a pleasure to deal with you as you have a wonderful manner and so does Molly! Would not ever think of changing from DialAFlight! You are the best!
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.
.
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
More articles below...
Not quite what you're looking for?
We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements