Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Excellent customer service. Everything went to plan with no problems. I will be back
As usual with DialAFlight everything was excellent
Big thank you to your team who got us home after our first flight of three was cancelled - special thanks to Tristan, Stan and Corrine who went above and beyond.
Connie is brilliant - I recommend her to everyone who travels!
The service we received was excellent, as it's been on each occasion we have used your services. The flights were exactly what we required and the suggestion to make a stop over to get the best price worked out really well. We'll use your services again next time we're making a trip abroad.
Excellent service DialAFlight, thank you very much.
Everything worked out well. No problems at all.
My flight back was cancelled but I was able to ring a 24/7 number where the advisor was very helpful and did her best to get me on the next available flight. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible as I had already checked in and Qatar Airways wouldn’t let her change it.
Always helpful with quick responses
A truly personal service, you feel like you are being assisted by a friend
Dale was brilliant
I received the usual high quality service from Amy Hibbert that I have been used to over more than 20 years of using DialAFlight
So helpful, efficient but friendly at the same time
DialAFlight says what it does and does what it says. Having used DialAFlight for a number of years, we have had peace of mind knowing that if there is ever a problem they are at the end of a telephone line to help from anywhere in the world.
Many thanks to Raphael in particular, but to the whole team. You helped us out of a very difficult situation and took all the worries away so that we had a stress free and very enjoyable trip. Can't thank you enough.
Exceptional flight with outstanding service and lovely staff. Will book again very soon. And you found us the best deal!
Excellent communication from DialAFlight staff - thanks Harvey.
I've booked with DialAFlight multiple times and have always been very happy dealing with them and getting the best dates and times to suit my requirements. They are always friendly and answer the phone very quickly with no annoying pre recorded messages or push button navigating. They are reliable and you can always phone again to check any concerns.
Deborah was absolutely amazing with her help when I needed flight changes in Dubai due to the flooding. I wouldn’t have got back to the UK so quickly without her.
Becky was my link for the holiday of a lifetime. She did an excellent job of keeping me updated and although we didn’t have to call on her for help it was a big reassurance that someone was there at the end of the phone.
Thank you to Daryll and his team at DialAFlight who allowed me to travel with complete peace of mind!
All the flights were really good. However coming back home from Auckland to Shanghai, I wish I’d been made aware that my suitcase would need to be collected at Shanghai and then rechecked in. It wasn’t a pleasant or particularly easy experience. Anyway it all worked in the end.
You are not to blame for the poor service I received on my business class flights from LHR to AKL via Dubai but I will not be booking Emirates in the future
No issues from your end but Dubai airport and Emirates were very poor as far as communication went during our six and a half hour delay.
Great friendly service. Makes life so much easier using them. They find you exactly want you want in a matter of minutes whereas in the past it's taken me hours
Great service and prompt attention
Great service as usual. Excellent phone pick up, good prices and wonderful advice about which airlines, stopovers and timings.
Zoe always delivers.
Annabelle C is amazing and I'd book again with her!
Lloyd was very helpful at all times
Nerves weren't the half of it. Even before touching down in this extraordinary country I couldn't help wondering whether I would have the courage to go skinny dipping with the Japanese in hot springs 6,000 miles away from my home in London.
'Can we wear bathing trunks?' I had asked.
'Absolutely not,' James Mundy, our InsideJapan tour guide, replied robustly. 'Of course, you are under no obligation to take part.'
So it was two days later that one late middle-aged hot-spring debutante clattered bravely in wooden clogs and a thin cotton kimono down the cobbled streets of Kinosaki, a small spa town on Japan's west coast, to the onsen bathhouse. England expects - and I am proud to report that in the end I flew the flag.
On the surface, Japan is Britain's doppelganger. There, on the other side of the world, is a small group of islands off the coast of a huge continent. They even think that they are better than their neighbours, smarter, more sophisticated, more worldly wise. They drive on the left. They understand queuing. They are reserved and courteous. They say sorry when you stand on their foot. All rather like us. On the other hand it is too far, too weird, too little about leisure too much about business and work, too, well, incomprehensible. And what makes this exotic country a once-in-a-lifetime must is precisely those reasons - the similarities and the differences. Or, in a word, the culture.
After all, it might be the last place you ever thought you would go. That's precisely why you must.
My five day 'taster' tour began in Osaka, a vast, modern sprawling port megapolis on the country's south coast, gateway to the markets of China and Korea. What the city lacks in charm it makes up for in drama.
The first evening started with delicious Wasabi-flavoured cocktails at the Upstairz bar at the modern and well-appointed Hotel Zentis. From there we hopped to the lively Dotombori area where a hallucinating barrage of LED and neon advertising bounced off the narrow canals to the delight of boisterous crowd-packed streets.
Dinner was a steep climb up narrow stairs to a tiny 20-seat restaurant where we were served Okonomiyaki - tasty savoury pancakes on a table that doubled as a hotplate. Afterwards came our first encounter with the glory of Japan, the tiny narrow backstreets where mini-drinking dens jostle with ancient Buddhist temples.
The next day it was off on a two-and-a-half hour train ride through steep wooded valleys and past rice paddies and factories to Kinosaki Onsen - a traditional spa resort on the West coast.
It is on the trains that the country reveals itself. Though a third bigger than the UK, largely mountainous Japan has just a quarter of our agricultural land.
Its 120 million population lives hugger mugger in the valleys - battered regularly by earthquakes and tsunamis. Hence, proximity and shared insecurity mould its society. Hardly surprising then, that conformity, etiquette and deference to rank are what in Japan substitute for religion. Crime is exceptionally low - even the yakuza gangsters eschew guns. Yet Japan's suicide rate is one of the highest in the world. More than half a million young people have such acute agoraphobia that they refuse to leave their rooms. For them, entertainment is delivered through their screens.
Our hotel was a traditional ryokan - Nishimuraya Honkan - a low-rise guesthouse owned by the same family for seven generations and set around an exquisite garden - itself rebuilt at least once after earthquake and fire.
Here the furniture was floor level, the room walls, flimsy rice paper sliding screens, and the futon bed on tatami mats, miraculously made and removed by silky, bowing staff. A brilliant and authentic experience.
Having survived bathing in blood hot waters - almost embarrassment free after the initial jitters - I discussed it with our knowledgeable and fluent guide, Richard Farmer, a longtime Japan resident.
'The thing about the onsen,' he said, 'is that it is about the only place in Japan where status and pecking orders do not prevail - naked we are all equal.'
But here was the second revelation about Japan: elsewhere, no one is equal, but all with a set place amid an astonishingly hierarchical and deferential system in which both the community (or the company) and seniority take precedence over the individual. 'The reason everyone works such long hours is not to let others down,' Richard said. 'When I was a teacher nobody left on time, but all waited, sometimes until 10pm, until the Principal went home. No one took all their holiday entitlement.'
The next day our quaintly named Limited Express train took us to Kyoto, spiritual capital of the Emperors - a low-rise city of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples surrounded by Zen gardens of exquisite beauty. In the streets, tourists and locals, many in Kimonos, mingle with the geishas for whom the city is home.
Two ancient temples later, we were dashing for the Shinkansen - the bullet train - and a 220mph rifle-shot ride to Tokyo. More remarkable even than the speed was the landscape.
As soon as we left the Kyoto hills, broader valleys emerged packed with small two-storey houses disappearing right to the horizon, broken only by the outlines of factories, their red and white striped chimneys pointing up like church towers.
The ancient Shinto fairyland of animist beliefs - gods in everything from a rock, to a waterfall or a peach - has evolved into an appetite for fantasy.
Today, this is satisfied by manga and animé cartoons, and an infantile attachment to mascots that bobble below schoolbags.
Maybe, it is the earthquakes that provoke a pining for kawaii - the comforts of kitsch cuteness. For similar reasons, Japanese capitalism prefers collaboration to competition for which, incidentally, no word exists. But companies also act like families and draw strongly on the advice of their shop floors to improve production. They think long term and stay loyal to small suppliers when times get tough.
Arriving in the great Tokyo metropolis was like stepping into a Blade Runner set, but without the ominous sense of menace - a benevolent termite colony and just as disciplined.
Weaving through oncoming crowds at the stations or waiting at pedestrian crossings, one marvelled that anywhere, however scattered with skyscrapers, could house so many.
By comparison, our hotel, The Bellustar, brand new and lodged in the capital's newest 50-storey Kabukicho Tower was an oasis of darkened corridors and chic minimalist design - tranquility high above an ant-heap. The luxury of space without people.
At a dinner that evening, I asked Yohei 'Sunny' Shigeno, our hotel host who had lived also in New York and London, which of the three cities he preferred.
'Oh London, definitely,' he said, appearing to mean it. 'I lived in Putney and I loved the peace and quiet. I loved the people, too. They are quite like us - reserved, orderly, calm and able to keep to themselves.' And Putney has the open heath.
Like, but also not like. That evening our InsideJapan tour guides took us to Golden Gai, a highly atmospheric collection of dozens of tiny, charming bars, housed in wooden shacks beneath the tower blocks - each with sitting space for barely a dozen, sometimes less.
'This, like the onsen,' said Richard, 'is probably the only other environment where deference no longer needs to apply.'
The free-flowing whisky helps. Drowsily musing on this whirlwind experience from the cosy comfort of a Finnair business class flat bed, I was awakened by a flight attendant.
'Just to say, we are flying over the North Pole, she said.
Befuddled by sleep, I raised the shade on my window to look down on an endless barren whiteness 40,000ft below.
Strange, I thought, but then again, not as strange or exhilarating as Japan. Go and see for yourself.
First published in the Daily Mail - July 2023
More articles below...
Not quite what you're looking for?
We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements