I have used DialAFlight a few times before -excellent service, phone operators superb, you get exactly what you ask for. Fantastic work.
Just more of the same please. Thank you Dexter
First class service as always
Excellent service from Stacey Rayner
You are always there if needed - thank you so much
Just what we expected from you as usual Manny
Any questions I had were answered promptly. We had a fantastic trip to Barbados
Exceptional service as usual!
Great pre and post service. I couldn't ask for more. I checked with Virgin/BA directly and a few other travel agencies and was really left with a feeling that they weren't interested in finding me the best flight price within the dates I was looking for. While DialAFlight provided options for the best dates to fly on, for prices that were not unfairly excessive..
Great service from Jason and his team again. Just when we thought we would have to stay put because of flight prices Jason never gave up and came back with a price solution. We were very happy.
Everything was as described
Marcus Nunn - exceptional as always from start to finish. Couldn’t recommend more
Your services were fantastic as always.
Due to accident while on the island we had to delay return twice. Whole team were so helpful in arranging our change of flights. Having dealt with you all for the last 10 years you have been amazing.
Excellent service
Great customer service was provided by Callum!
Perfect service again from Ross
Taylor and his team were truly amazing with everything
Overall satisfied, but sometimes was not easy getting the information we needed, but had a great holiday
Fast, prompt and friendly service. Would definitely highly recommend
Fantastic service as usual from Kylie
Like many our flights were cancelled each year through Covid-19, however Robert and team did their upmost to keep us updated and then get us the best price. Cannot praise them enough for their kind, caring professional manner and keeping us updated at every opportunity. Thank you so much. Highly recommend
Excellent service as usual from Jeff especially given the numerous rescheduling of this holiday! All information correct and as expected with flight, transfer and accommodation.
Thank you for your patience and help over two difficult years. Special thanks to Jack.
Conrad is the best
Provided great level of support before holiday and at destination.
The meet and greet at the airport in Barbados was excellent with an excellent car transfer.
Have already recommended you guys to a friend of ours and they used your service a couple of weeks ago. Sally and her team do an excellent job of looking after me, that's why I keep using DialAFlight
Thanks again Ivor. Don’t ever want to book a flight without you!
Very helpful and efficient
Some might remember a TV show of seven years ago called The Young Ones (not to be confused with the comedy series of the Eighties), in which six celebrities in their 70s and 80s attempt to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.
They spent their time in a country house decked out as a 1970s time capsule. The idea was to transport them back to their heyday - they walked on shag pile carpet and watched Crossroads, sipping Dandelion & Burdock, to see if it improved their ailing health and failing memories.
The six were cricket umpire Dickie Bird, dancer Lionel Blair, newsreader Kenneth Kendall, radio presenter Derek Jameson and actresses Sylvia Syms and Liz Smith - and it seems that taking them back to a world where everything was strictly 1975 had a miraculous effect. The experiment, particularly the part involving shag pile carpets, was very successful and they did feel younger.
I mention this because I met a very clever man called Bengt in Bequia, a tiny island just a speedboat dash from Mustique, who is conducting a similar experiment. Bengt is the proud owner of the Bequia Beach Hotel, which is full of couples of a certain age congratulating other couples for being so much younger than all the other couples of almost certainly the same age.
Trapped in time
For Bengt, you see, has created a perfect time capsule. By the time you've checked into one of the 1930s colonial-style rooms with 1950s-style posters, and followed 1960s-style wooden signs to the bar and ordered your first Dark 'n' Stormy, you're already feeling 20 years younger.
It's not just the decor, agreeable though it is. Everything here exudes old-style charisma, a Pathé newsreel picture of how the Caribbean used to be before the big bucks and giant cruise liners steamed in.
There's nothing fusty about the Bequia Beach Club, but everything is as it should be. Charming open-air restaurant on the beach: check. Delicious fresh seafood: check. Friendly but unpushy staff: check. Secluded stretch of sand fringing a gently swelling ocean: check. Cool pool with mysterious rejuvenating powers: check. Friendly faces at the bar swapping rum-punchy gossip about how Carole Middleton put people's noses out of joint in Mustique: check.
The island, which hasn't changed much since Harold Macmillan stayed here (someone told me they'd read he came up with 'You've never had it so good' on the island) is proud of its Royal connections.
Princess Margaret once dropped anchor off Bequia. As a result there's a rather fetching beach named after her. A 30-minute stroll away is the capital, Port Elizabeth, a scruffily teeming one-street town packed with shops, markets and harbourside bars.
Forty minutes away by twin-prop plane is the five-star Coral Reef Club in Barbados, where we stayed for our second week. It, too, exudes old-school cool, although this time for very A-list guests.
Had they wished, the owners of this hotel could have adopted the Bequia naming policy and christened its beach after visiting royalty. Or you could now be staying in a Harold Pinter, Agatha Christie or Prince Harry suite. All have enjoyed the hospitality of the O'Hara family, who have owned the hotel since the 1950s.
But this is the kind of hotel where the rich, famous and we lesser mortals can drift in and out incognito.
No wonder Agatha Christie was inspired to write A Caribbean Mystery here.
There's still an air of exotic mystery about the place, as if a man in tennis whites might appear at any moment among the palms and confess to Miss Marple that yes, it was he who committed the heinous murder in the bougainvillea and he doesn't care who knows it.
Every room is high-spec and the restaurant is high-end. But Coral Reef hasn't lost sight of the good old days. You can bet every dry martini here is shaken, not stirred.
If you hanker after a nightclub, well, that's just a short car ride away - this is hip and happening Barbados after all. But at the Coral Reef it's more cocktails and cool crooners.
Family values
The Coral Reef Club is built on good old-fashioned family values. And that's down to the O'Haras. They may look as if they've stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue, with their brilliant white shirts and glossy good looks, but they are a very real sleeves-rolled-up presence in the hotel.
Matriarch Cynthia glides around the reception rooms and hosts an elegant cocktail party once a week, and sons Mark and Patrick patrol the restaurant.
This is not just their livelihood, it's their home, and you are made to feel like their guests, not just hotel guests.
First published in the Mail Online - February 2017
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