Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Service is brilliant. Appreciated the call before we left just to check we were happy with everything and that we had all our documents. Always recommend Noah. My go to company.
Michael Millward went above and beyond to facilitate a last-minute trip to New York and Miami. Could not be more impressed and could not recommend more highly!
Very happy with the service I received and extremely impressed with Alamo car hire which was booked for us
Excellent as always!
Excellent customer service. Have never been disappointed.
What can I say but perfect. Thank you.
Could not ask for any more support from the team dealing with my flights. Excellent.
I phoned several times after booking my flight for information. On every occasion I was answered promptly and dealt with professionally and in a friendly, helpful way. I have used your company a few times now
Consistently great service
Nadia brilliant as ever. Very efficient, very professional. Really helpful in achieving value for money.
Always good service
Wayne is very, helpful, knowledgeable, approachable and is able to guide us to the right places. I would recommend him to all my friends
I have been so impressed with DialAFlight! Elliott was incredibly helpful throughout and we got an excellent quote for what turned out to be an incredible holiday.
Fantastic service all the time from Neil Frost and his team
You are our go-to travel agents!
Very good service - kept us up to date and organised everything quickly. Would recommend. 5 stars
Quality of hotels very good and car hire problem free. Good service and very happy overall
Sorry but was not overall enthralled by the accommodation. Location was good but a very tired hotel unfortunately. I know we only sleep there but could have had better eating facilities, a coffee counter in the morning only and sweets all day.
A first class service which I will use again
All good, Bradley is so efficient and everything went very well. Thank you so much,
Perfect as always
Fantastic reassuring, straightforward advice! Always there when needed and when we were put on standby on the first leg of our journey a panicked phone call from me was quietly reassuring: “ If I was a betting man, I would say you’ll get on.“ Thanks. Terrific.
Gary Patel has been excellent - providing us with a service that is 5 star
Your performance was, as always, excellent. The performance of American Airlines on my return flight from Raleigh Durham was not.
Billy, who I dealt with, was personable and efficient
Obviously the BA flight getting cancelled is not ideal but not your fault
Eric was amazing as always
Noah worked some miracles to get me to the States and back. Thank you!
Great service from Oscar - would definitely recommend DialAFlight to friends
Roy Copeland always delivers above and beyond
What you have to under-stand,' a fellow guest says to me, 'is that Oman is the Scotland of the Middle East.'
We are on the Jabal Akhdar with vultures circling around us. The view below is a vast canyon of steep precipices and gorges mixed in with tiny villages clinging to the cliff side, surrounded by terraces cut into the rock.
With a cloudless sky, the air is desert-dry. We are at nearly 7,000-ft above sea level. The scenery is breathtaking and every bit as dramatic as the Scottish Highlands. For those who want to holiday in a quiet part of the Middle East without being overwhelmed by bling, Oman offers a serene (and safe) option.
In 1986, Charles and Diana flew by helicopter to this spot to spend the day in glorious isolation. Did it remind the royal pair of Balmoral? Thirty years on, there's a luxury hotel here and the view has been accessorised with a palatial spa, fountains and gardens, cocktails and gourmet food.
The Anantara Al Jabal Al Akhdar hotel is owned by the Oman army's pension fund and featured in the BBC series Best Hotels In The World.
The guests include Western ex-pats from the UAE, as well as Middle Eastern families, in search of temperate temperatures.
High altitude, cool climate
The royal picnic spot has become a terrace with a glass balcony, sofas and a fire-pit, while a cocktail trolley is wheeled out for sunset when the mountains turn a rosy pink.
The hotel has also thoughtfully provided blankets – temperatures can veer towards the Scottish and it's always about 15 degrees lower than in the capital, Muscat, two hours away. A combination of sunglasses and down jackets is the sartorial norm.
The scenery is dramatic but the atmosphere is calm. Oman's citizens - all 4.6million of them - belong to the gentle Ibadi practice of Islam. Oman has oil, but it has always been one of the most understated parts of the Middle East.
The Anantara is very luxurious, with 82 rooms that face the cliff, full of power showers and kingsize beds. Oman is famous for its marble and there's plenty of it on display. There are also 33 spacious villas, some of which have private pools.
An enjoyable blend of glamour and lycra-based activity, this is a hotel with its own via ferrata - an abseiling and zip-lining route that sees adventurous guests popping out by the infinity swimming pool after a couple of hours.
There's also a two-hour walk between a series of deserted villages, involving rock scrambles and balancing along narrow waterways. But it's worth it. We walk in the middle of steep terraces used by farmers to cultivate roses which have an intensity of scent that's famous.
We also see walnut and pomegranate trees, a reed-fringed spring and, as we inch around a rock with a sheer fall below, a tiny waterfall, fed by the short period of rain that usually comes in February or March.
In the 1950s, the children who lived here faced a three-hour climb to get to school. But only a handful of people live in the villages these days. Most have built new homes in the hills above the hotel, but come back to farm the land.
The ancient houses are still there, with mud walls and beams made from juniper wood.
Centuries-old irrigation
Jabal Akhdar translates as Green Mountain, but the terraces are looking a bit parched, despite an ingenious water canal irrigation system called falaj that the farmers use and which has been developed over centuries. A desalination plant is being built to help the farmers.
Back at the hotel, on Diana Point, as it is known, I fall into conversation with Andrew Bickerdike, who lived in Oman in the 1990s when he served with the Sultan's armed forces and was back on Jabal Akhdar for the first time since then. He says: 'Getting up here on the small local tracks took the best part of a day back then.'
On our last morning, there's a misty start to the day and clouds gather. Finally, a few drops of rain turn into a downpour.
Instantly, you can tell who is Omani and who comes from the real Scotland. Out on Diana Point, whole families are huddled under umbrellas, in a state between gratitude and amusement.
'We've never seen rain in Oman before,' say a young Omani couple as they pull the hoods up on their puffer jackets.
First published in the Mail on Sunday - June 2019
More articles below...
Not quite what you're looking for?
We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements