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!
Some of us simply can't do a whole English winter any more. For me, there is the added business every December and early January of being on the panto treadmill, three shows a day, in Guildford.
What's more, this year, the Grim Reaper had been scything like Poldark through my address book. I needed a break. I needed sun. Then someone suggested Goa is a goer. 'Goa?' said our son. 'Isn't that where you take stimulants and rave?' Well, excuse me if I rave.
THE LEELA HOTEL
The Leela Hotel is wonderful - despite the fact that Putin visits. Sir Mark Tully, the BBC's voice of India, stays, as does Sonia Gandhi, who arrived shortly after we left.
My wife Kate and I flew there non-stop and then had an easy 75-minute transfer.
Many of our fellow passengers were heading for package hotels up the coast, rather than sweeping into The Leela's discreet gates at the end of the peninsula.
A BIT OF BACKGROUND
The Leela was built 26 years ago and has benefited from less strict planning controls than exist now. It was able to secure a private beach then, not possible now, so that means it can put as many sun loungers on the sand as it wants.
Hotels now, fronting public beaches, can park no more than a dozen loungers. But for Leela guests, there are more than enough loungers for everyone.
Croquet is the only nod to the Raj, but the guests nevertheless are 50 per cent English: you can tell by their Boden linen. An elderly lady archaeologist from Pimlico, an accountant from Bromley, a yoga teacher from Hampstead. All regulars for decades. 'What makes this place,' they chorus, 'is the staff.' The astonishing ratio is 3.5 staff to each guest, lifting your finger before you're even aware that it needs lifting.
Of the rest? Russians (in bling), Euro-randoms (Italians leading the charge) and wealthy Indians. Their children are perfect: well-behaved and virtually invisible.
AT THE BEACH
The beach is perfect, too – no lacerating coral, the breeze cooling without sandblasting. At sunrise, there are dolphins. Sea eagles frame themselves beautifully between palm trees.
Sandpipers dart. Beach guards keep hawkers away. At night, you watch the lamps on the fishing boats and owlets hunting.
The huge rooms are scattered around 75 acres, overlooking lagoons where pink lilies bloom.
There are private villas, too, within the – yet more exclusive – Club, for Bollywood stars and Mr Putin. Silent buggies convey the elderly from joy to joy.
Conferences are discreetly arranged, wedding pavilions erected and down by morning. Indian ceremonies are welcoming and their tribute bands do a creditable Radio Ga Ga.
We attended not one, but two, Punjabi weddings of radiant couples we had never seen before, nor shall again, but may blessings rain upon them. My meditation class was too singsong to be intelligible, but the four-year-old Indian boy in front of me had it sussed. The gym is so deserted that the trainers are truly personal. In the top-flight spa, Kate had a magnificent holistic massage, with oils, bells and probably whistles.
CULINARY DELIGHTS
All You Can Eat was never like this. Thyme-scented lentil soup with roasted walnuts? Goan kingfish? A bewildering vegetarian menu, creamy dhals, dhingri palak? Desserts? How about rabri (cardamom condensed milk) and dates in soft, white fudge?
Trips to the Goan capital Panaji with your own driver are astonishingly inexpensive and you can shop there for textiles, paper and incense.
Ten miles on and Old Goa, with its Portugese churches, is unmissable. 'Another day in Paradise,' says the daily Leela newsletter. Nonsense. Paradise can't compete with this. Paradise won't have so many staff.
First published in the Mail Online - July 2018
More articles below...