Excellent service as always and looking forward to our booking for 2024
Very happy to recommend John - he is very professional and makes booking flights easy.
Thanks again DialAFlight for your knowledge and expertise. A great team.
Many thanks again to Jordan and team. Excellent as usual
Perfect service from the team expecially Richard Stumph, who went over and above for us two seniors. A big thank you .
Patrick sorted everything to his usual high standards and professionalism
Thanks Nadia and the team again. Always brilliant and professional.
I would like to take the time to especially thank Jarvis who booked the flights for 9 people. Some with different return flights. Marvellous work and a big thank you. Of course our organisation will definitely be using you again and again and will recommend you to our friends and family.
Excellent service again.
All sorted as usual and good communication
Jonathan Greaves was such a help to us and arranged everything we asked for. We flew Virgin and Delta and we found Virgin to be superior for premium economy. We had a wonderful holiday and would definitely use DialAFlight again
Try to find a different rental car company at reasonable price please.
Used DialAFlight on many occasions and have never been disappointed. Contact before, during and after our trip is polite and non invasive.
Kennedy is a wonderful successor to Marcus who looked after us for probably 10 years. I look forward to working with her in future
Our first time with Virgin Premier - would do it again.
Russell and Mason were both very helpful and handled any queries I had promptly and very well. Customer service was excellent and gave me real peace of mind both before we went and during our holiday. Everything went to plan. A great family holiday had by all.
Jackson Cowton was absolutely brilliant in sorting our flights and hotel stay. We call him every time we want to go away. He’s AMAZING.
Excellent service from Travis as always. Totally reliable and friendly at all times. Would and have recommended friends and family.
Excellent service from Callum as always
Have booked through Saf more than once and will do again. Excellent service from first call - very helpful and the best price all round. Great customer service
Had an issue but it was all sorted pronto. Excellent service
All top drawer service yet again from Tristan Chatburn.
Spent time looking at flights and different airports to find most economical route. Great communication.
As always excellent service
Everything was smooth - the only issue was the car hire was poor
Superb service as always. I would not go anywhere else when arranging flights and car hire. We very much appreciated the call before departure, nice personal touch. Darren was outstanding.
Unfortunately Virgin downgraded two members of our family on our return flight. We are waiting to hear back from them but it definitely put a negative feeling at the end of a lovely holiday
Dexter handled all that was needed as usual so thank him on our behalf
I have used Roy since 2004 - I always recommend him to friends and family as he always does a great job
Good prices and everything worked out without an issue.
In January 1981 when mass tourism from the UK to Florida had hardly begun, I made my first trip to the Sunshine State - flying to Miami; this was memorable if only because in the departure lounge at Heathrow I found myself standing next to Eric Morecambe and his wife Joan.
Bring me sunshine, he was probably singing to himself. He needn't have worried; it was freezing in London but when we landed in Miami in the late afternoon, it was roasting. In January! Yet in 1981 Miami was in decline. In the 1960s, for example, when The Beatles made their first trip to the US in 1964 to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, they demonstrated their stratospheric success by finding time for a sunshine break in glamorous Miami Beach.
But 20 years later the Al Pacino gangster film Scarface showed how fast Miami Beach had fallen - business was so bad that plans were laid to demolish the famous Art Deco hotels which had largely become hostels. (Curiously, it was the filming of the 1980s cop series Miami Vice that initiated the preservation campaign - the rundown buildings clashed with the show's Ferraris and Armani suits, so the city was forced to smarten up.)
By 1981 Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, had been open for almost a decade but the place was relatively modest; EPCOT didn't open until 1982.
My trip in 1981 was to write a piece on Air Florida, which had announced the start of low-cost flights between Miami and Gatwick - a route on which it was to compete with Laker Airways. Laker went bust the next year while Air Florida collapsed in 1984. But by the mid-Eighties, thanks to the marketing of some mass operators, Florida had begun to dominate the UK long-haul market.
It had good year-round weather and offered extraordinary value for money. Brits found the accommodation well-appointed and spacious and in the favoured Orlando suburb of Kissimmee, theme parks were on your doorstep.
Since that first visit, the more I've seen of Florida, the more I like it. I've been pretty much all over from Key West - so far south it is just 100 miles from Cuba - up to St Augustine and beyond. I like it all but I'm beginning to decide that I like the western Gulf coast the best, especially the stretch between Tampa and Sarasota.
For a week recently I had a house rental on Anna Maria Island, about an hour's drive south of Tampa. Tampa is an attractive entry point into the States, with shorter immigration queues.
Everything in Florida is nice and easy, from picking up a hire car to obtaining the keys of your holiday house (most have lock boxes, all you need is the combination - I never met anybody from the house rental company). Florida has everything to make a holiday perfect. Had we wanted, we could have made the two-hour drive to Orlando for a theme-park fix, but Anna Maria island has pretty much all you need.
The property came with a golf cart for short trips to the shop or the beach - bikes were also available. There was a large pool, a table-tennis table, a multi-channel TV with domestic TV catch-up - and the fastest wifi I've come across: 80mbps (ten times faster than I get at home). With a Slingbox connection, I was able to sit next to the pool and watch England beat the Aussies in the Ashes - holidays don't get much better than this.
Bradenton was a 25-minute drive, worth it to visit the Ellerton premium outlet mall with outrageous bargains on designer clothes. A similar distance away down at the end of Longboat Key (winter home to writer Stephen King) was Sarasota, worth visiting to stock up on food and drink at Whole Foods: not as cheap as the Publix, a ten-minute golf-cart ride away from the house, but in a different universe in terms of quality.
Because Anna Maria is a place which doesn't attract day trippers, the beaches are never crowded, and at many times of day, if you avoid the busier stretches, you will have them to yourself. Keep an eye out and you will spot dolphins skimming the offshore waters.
The house had a rooftop deck area where one night we watched the Perseid meteor shower stream across the night sky.
Even on non-meteor-shower nights, it was a delight to sit up on the roof and look at stars that seemed close enough to touch. There may be more perfect places to holiday than Florida but, at this very moment, I'm finding it hard to think of one…
First published in the Mail Online - January 2016
More articles below...
Not quite what you're looking for?
We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements
Clients range from TV companies to Space agencies, investment banks to firms recruiting nurses, doctors and teachers around the world. One saves tigers, elephants and and orang-utans, another clears landmines around the world.
But they all have one thing in common. They love the unique DialAFlight approach. Read more here
Let us extend the personalised service of your booking into your holiday with great prices on business class flights ready to add a touch of class to your trip.
Take the stress out of travelling with a host of wonderful perks on offer from priority check-in and premium lounge access to chauffeur service and fine in-flight dining, plus the supreme comfort of a fully-reclining seat.
Call us to see how much you could save on Business Class flights.
Airport Lounges from £25
Once you’re through security leave the crowds, kids and chaos behind you with a visit to one of our comfortable airport lounges.
All offer complimentary food, drinks, wifi and newspapers with some also including Fastrack through security. Prices from £25.
Use our speedy private transfer service to avoid the stress of finding your way out of the airport terminal and looking for a taxi or bus on arrival.
With our meet and greet service, our driver will meet you in the arrivals hall. They will monitor flight arrival times giving you peace of mind that someone will be waiting for you with a name board even if your flight is late.
They will then assist you with your luggage and organise a private transfer directly to your hotel - there’s no waiting around for other passengers for shared transfers!
So no queues, no delays and less stress.
What could be better than giving someone the Gift of Travel?
Starting at just £50, with no maximum value, DialAFlght's 'Gift of Travel' vouchers make the perfect present for any occasion or celebration.
And it couldn't be simpler to organise, just contact one of our travel experts today and they will organise a personalised travel voucher to be sent out.
BACK TO TOP
