What 15640 DialAFlight clients thought of USA

Declan has been brilliant

Excellent customer relationships. Scott has been the most helpful, knowledgeable and responsive consultant throughout the entire process. I would most definitely recommend!

Kennedy has been fantastic - great communication throughout

Very good guidance on hotels. Excellent support before and during trip.

Excellent service even when I was in the USA

I would like to share this experience. When I first booked I said to Joey you are £40 dearer than I can book online. His response was in an emergency who are you going to call? True I said and booked. Six days into my trip I had a call from home, my grandson was in intensive care following a bleed in his brain. I was on the road back to Philadelphia when I called the emergency number. It was answered in seconds and within 10 minutes my flight had been changed. Brilliant reaction. Conclusion might have been a few quid more but probably the best £40 I have spent in years. Thank you all

Great service as always - thank you Conrad and the team

Jake has once again delivered an amazing holiday. Even when we wanted to change our itinerary midway through he organised everything over the phone for us. Wouldn’t book with anyone else!

Professional service throughout - would definitely book with DialAFlight again

24hrs service, quick action taken. I would highly recommend them because they were there when I needed them, during my difficult time with a flight.

I have used DialAFlight a few times before - this trip also went well. Noah was very helpful.

You are always exceptionally helpful.

Sean was very helpful and managed our trip throughout the pandemic resulting in us traveling two years later. We will be back soon for another booking

Roy was great as always and did a great job. I always recommend him

Excellent service as usual. Had a fantastic 25 nights in USA on road trip. Want to thank Jessica and the team for all the help and advice given. My advice is give them a call. You won’t regret it!

We very pleased with the level of service we received from Nicky Degun. We had a stress free holiday yet again

I Just would like to thank you all for excellent service and I'll definitely recommend DialAFlight to friends and family. 10 out of 10

Having tried to self-book flights for the USA but failed to find flights within our budget I tried DialAFlight. Jake was informative, achieved the best value and in addition, following a change to our circumstances, he helpfully arranged additional car hire to accommodate a privately booked excursion.

Dexter Tahsin was extremely helpful over the 3 years it took to actually be able to fly to the USA. Excellent service and will definitely use you again.

Excellent service. Hotels were excellent at each destination. Very helpful at each stage of planning our trip.

Sean was incredibly helpful and efficient. He made the process stress free.

Flight cancellations for the return home from USA could potentially have been disastrous. However, DialAFlight ensured that new flights were arranged and in the end it was plain sailing - or was that ‘plane sailing’?

You provided us with very good service. We will definitely recommend you. Thank you for looking after us

I would like to express my appreciation to Joe Orton for arranging our holiday to Vegas which was a success. The return flight was delayed for 5 hours but that was BA’s fault. I will definitely book my future holidays with DialAFlight

Excellent and attentive service. Only one 'could do better'. We were on Virgin's summer overflow flight on the way back in a 737 - not comfortable for an overnight transatlantic - a bigger plane took off 30 minutes before which we'd have preferred to be on.

Excellent customer care and service from polite, friendly and knowledgeable agent.

Can't fault level of service and attention to detail. Thank you Gavin.

Always so helpful and efficient

Zoe was amazing from the first time I spoke to her about what kind of holiday I wanted

We were generally satisfied with the service.

Miami is in the pink

From its fabulous beaches to vibrant arts scene, Jenny Coad finds the city is a masterpiece of glamour and creativity

Half the celebrity world, including singer Rita Ora and Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley, have been carousing on Miami's famous beach.

Everyone else in the know (and with a few million to spare) is buying up property. Last year, more than 4.9million cruise passengers sailed through its port. What's going on?

Well, the climate helps. The mid- 20s is a typical temperature for a winter day in this part of Florida, while we're shivering in Britain. The changing arts scene is upping the temperature, too.

Art Basel, a cultural showcase that stages art fairs around the world, brings in dealers and innovative artists.

Last year's festival was bigger than ever, with 77,000 visitors. A new art museum, Perez, opened in 2013, featuring contemporary works from the U.S., Caribbean and Latin America.

Vibrant grafitti at Wynwood Walls

And there's a lively street art scene, the best of which can be seen in the former warehouse area of Wynwood, north of downtown Miami and roughly bounded by NW 36th Street, NW 20th street, I-95 and NE 1st Avenue.

In just a few short years, this once undistinguished locality has become the arts hub of South Florida. It started with murals, street art, and graffiti, encouraged, unconventionally, by the neighbour-hood's early developers - spawning vibrant spaces teeming with outdoor art.

Today, there are more than 70 galleries and museums, dozens of new restaurants and bars, and hundreds of companies and innovators working in a place that feels alive with creativity.

Here, one wall – with its wild splashes of colour by graffiti artist Rafael Sliks – is not dissimilar to the creations of Jackson Pollock.

Damien Hirst's golden mammoth at the Feana hotel

There are wonderful new hotels. Faena, at the north end of South Beach, is pure theatre. There are gold columns and cosseting scarlet all over the place, from the toiletries to the bedroom curtains, and extraordinary art.
Have you ever seen a mammoth skeleton embossed with gold leaf? Me neither. But there's one by Damien Hirst called Gone But Not Forgotten, displayed in a climate controlled box on the terrace. You can see it from the beach and it's even illuminated at night.

There is also an exotic mural in the entrance by the Argentine-born artist Juan Gatti, which features flamingos, palms, tropical birds and skulls, transporting you into a fantasy jungle – a theme that's continued throughout.

This is the vision of Argentine developer Alan Faena in collaboration with film director Baz Luhrmann. And it extends to the surrounding area – the Faena Forum, which opened recently, holds art installations, intimate concerts, a theatre and a bazaar-style shopping area.

And that beach. It's on your doorstep. Skip across the boardwalk and you can explore its ten miles of sand and sample the life and soul of Miami.

Trendy Aeroga class on Miami Beach

One morning, I take an Aeroga class, a mixture of yoga and aerobics, that has my heart thumping. On a more leisurely ramble, I see wiry retirees walking with little dogs, cyclists and even someone on roller blades.

More people are out and about in the shadier afternoons. But despite the many hotels that back onto its sands, it is still not especially crowded.
Brightly painted lifesaving posts make colourful markers.

In one spot, something involving police cars is being filmed. In another, an artist is sculpting voluptuous mermaids from the sand while, on the rocks, a model is being photographed in provocative swimwear.

You can walk from Faena to renowned Deco Ocean Drive in around 40 minutes, or hire a Citi Bike from £2.80 for 30 minutes.

Author Jan Morris, in Coast To Coast, called Fifties Collins Avenue, which runs parallel to Ocean Drive, 'a street of nightmarish hotels, each more feverishly grotesque than the last. Pink and saffron and blue, with… a constant stream of visitors, like a flood of some barbarous beverage, forever moving in and out of their doors'. But I like the pina colada paint job on Ocean Drive, though it is similarly busy with just a touch of the tawdry.

Perez Art Museum

Bars line the streets, Bentleys cruise the Tarmac, drunks sway along the pavements and you can have your fortune told by a South Beach psychic.

The north end of Collins Avenue is a classier turn. Here, you can start or end the evening in The Regent Cocktail Club at the Gale Hotel. Or sit outside in the enveloping warmth of a Miami evening at 27 Restaurant And Bar.

They serve a tasty twist on tapas, but the portions are not small. This is America, after all.

Round that off with a Smoke and Sparks cocktail (tequila, jalapeno, lime, flaming salt) in the bar back at Faena and you'll be as convinced as I am that Miami is still living the dream.

First published in the Daily Mail - August 2016

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