Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Milo was excellent. The only negative was our first hotel in Cairo, which was a dry hotel that didn’t serve alcohol located in an area unsuitable for western tourists. This hotel was recommended by your local agents in Egypt and was a huge disappointment. Milo managed to find us a different excellent hotel for our second stay in Cairo and we ended the holiday on a good note.
Excellent service from Brody, as always.
Really enjoyable flight
Always good
Dealt with Donovan again when booking my recent holiday. His service is first class and I would contact him again with future enquiries.
Fabulous trip, everything went so well
As ever excellent - thanks Liam
Wayne Bailey delivered exactly what he said he would. He always gives more than 100% - highly recommended.
The first time we have used you and will definitely be booking again. Special thanks to Rupert for giving us the option to change hotels when we were advised of building works. We didn’t end up changing but it was good to have the option.
Fantastic cruise, trully spoiling. Flights were well planned and also went to plan. Only thing I thought, in hindsight, is that it would have been good to have added in a trip to Abu Sempel and also to have travelled one of the Cairo-Luxor/Aswan journeys by train.
Thanks again Freddie
Fabulous service from booking to departure from Jane Garfield. She’s taken care of me for a few years and she always instinctively picks the right places. The Ned is such a lovely hotel, nearer to the old town and within easy reach of all the best bits. Good find Jane!
Stan was fantastic, booked both our flights and hotels quickly and efficiently. Our trip all went smoothly, looking forward to booking our next holiday.
Charlie did us proud
Great service. Would definitely book with them again.
Stuart was very helpful and knowledgeable. Everything really went well.
Adam was great as usual, very helpful, easily contactable and answered any questions very quickly.
Thanks for all the help and advice.
Many thanks as always to Oli and the team for sorting and then amending my trip to the Middle East. Really happy with everything and look forward to planning my next trip with you guys.
The whole holiday package was first class
Always give us an excellent service
Very smooth booking process and excellent service from Vernon - thank you!
Noah and the team are always wonderful. Attentive, patient with good communication throughout making us feel looked after. The holiday was excellent and I’d highly recommend
Kennedy is a credit to your firm, she’s always given excellent service, right up to departure. The personal touch is what makes your company so appealing. We will continue to use you, and most of all recommend you to our friends and family.
Always a pleasure to book with DialAFlight - Seamless process and nothing is too much trouble. Thank you Sean
Thanks Daryl you made our holiday special once again
Excellent service!
First rate service all round. And a faultless holiday!
Chris has been our agent for many years. Our holiday bookings are always very well managed.
I have been using DialAFlight now for over 10 years. And In that time I have never had a bad word to say about Arthur or the company. Last year when I had some trouble with the hotel I booked in Thailand you sorted it all out while I was there. Top company that I will always be using.
If we build it they will come' could be the mantra of the overarchingly ambitious project that is Dubai.
My first visit in 2002 was a stopover from Afghanistan where I'd been reporting for ITN. We were awed by the scale and luxury. We drank lurid cocktails at a swim-up bar and watched dredgers spraying arcs of sand into the sea. Someone said they were creating a huge island, the shape of a date palm. The idea seemed so fantastical as to be unbelievable.
Through audacity, far-sighted-ness and an ability to hold its nerve through the financial crash, Dubai has created a futuristic mega-city that's now the fourth largest tourist draw on Earth.
If visitors ask to see the 'real' Dubai, they're pointed towards The Creek, where wooden boats once fished the saltwater inlet and traders from India and East Africa supplied souks on the water's edge. There, visitors are assured, they can still find authentic heritage. But the Creek is being transformed. Tourist boats still chug down the waterway but today they're spotting super-yachts and giddying construction projects.
And its centrepiece, sitting long and low on the waterfront, is one of the most ambitious and high-end hotels to date - the Palazzo Versace. Imagine fusing the most flamboyant Italian fashion house with the pulsating emporium of wealth and ambition which is Dubai. You might picture the result as a fest of gaudy excess.
ITALIAN MASTERPIECE
Yet the Palazzo Versace, a vast neoclassical construction that resembles a 16th Century Italian palace is, dare I say, subtle and tasteful amid gold and glass skyscrapers that pierce the clouds all over town. It may be restrained in Dubai terms, but it's not low-key. The entrance has striking high ceilings, and a huge glass frontage overlooking the water.
There's the vast mosaic on the floor, made up of more than a million pieces and the size of an Olympic swimming pool, beyond which there is, well, an Olympic-size swimming pool.
And marble everywhere. Then there are the furnishings. Every single piece of furniture and fabric in the hotel's 215 rooms and suites is designed and tailor-made by the House of Versace.
At this point I may have been reviewing the wisdom of bringing my three pre-teenage boys along. I wouldn't let them walk past a Versace store at home for fear they'd cause costly damage; now they were effectively living in one.
Yet, from the off they rose to the challenge. They might have spent the whole first day in their vast room playing with a console that created mood lighting and operated the curtains had our butler (yes, really) not offered them a hotel tour.
They discovered the central infinity pool is for adults only but as there are two other huge pools, it wasn't exactly a hardship.
They were quickly on first name terms with most of the staff. They struck up a friendship with a Malaysian chef who sent over duck pancakes each time we ate at the fantastic buffet.
A DESERT ADVENTURE
We swerved the famed shopping malls (some the size of 50 football pitches), instead heading to the desert in search of adventure. Our guide, Saleh, looked incongruous in the marble foyer in a huge pair of desert boots, as did his 4x4 among the Ferraris and Bentleys outside.
But half an hour later the skyscrapers had given way to sand dunes and we were spotting oryx resting in the evening sun.
That was the calm before the sand storm as the dune bashing began: this is a sort of do-it-yourself rollercoaster where your vehicle climbs to the top of a dune, then lurches perilously down the other side.
Another day trip was to a water park where my children sought out the scariest rides. As a gift to myself, for surviving, we had dinner in the Palazzo Versace's Enigma restaurant. The restaurant showcases top chefs from around the world. Each comes for a three or four-month stay. We were fed by Quique Dacosta, who has a three-star Michelin restaurant near Alicante. It was an incredible sensory experience.
This hotel is the centrepiece of what Dubai calls its 'Culture Village'. If you think culture and Dubai don't belong in the same sentence, that's to underestimate its incredible vision. In a few years Dubai will have an opera house to rival Sydney's.
So could this centre of conspicuous consumption become a destination for art and culture tourism? You wouldn't bet against it. After all it's not as farfetched as building a giant island shaped like a palm tree in the Arabian Gulf.
First published in the Daily Mail - March 2017
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