Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Ash Pankhania was excellent - he guided me through my options and worked quickly and efficiently to get me booked and on my flights. Communication following my reservation was also excellent and I will certainly book through you again
Everything went beautifully. Thank you.
Great service and a fantastic trip Lovely to have personal service and attention from Robert .
Thank you for a very smooth trip
The only problem we had was at Sao Paulo on the outward leg where we had great trouble getting boarding cards via Gol Airlines. I failed to do it on my phone and a girl at the desk took some time to achieve it too.
Had an issue with a flight from Salta to Buenos Aires being cancelled and moved so we would arrive at the estancia around midnight. But Rosie managed to get it changed to a morning flight which made the experience better as we would have had only a full day there otherwise
Manny and his team couldn't have been more helpful - including rescheduling a missed flight. I've used DialAFlight for many years, and friends I've recommended have also been delighted to find they offer prompt and friendly service. You can actually talk to one of the team 24/7, they are unfailingly helpful, efficient and nice.
Thank goodness for the 24/7 helpline. On a bank holiday Monday we had to reschedule our flights home. Out of ten other people doing the same our new flights were sorted in the hour. Others could not even get to speak to their agents! Imagine the stress when this situation occurs.
Everything went like clockwork. PERFECT.
Luke helpful as usual
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Mollie was excellent. She did exactly what we asked, kept in touch and helped us with any queries we had.
I was going through a different agent who messed me around. I spent the weekend trying to arrange something with them having been told it was confirmed and then they told me they couldn’t secure the seat and I’d have to pay a different price. I called Bradley at DialAFlight on the Monday and within 15 minutes he managed to resolve my issue. The price I was given was 2nd to none and I was very impressed with his conduct and his after service. Thank you so much DialAFlight
Will be back if and when I fly again!
Thank you Gavin. Professional and honest advice and service every time.
Smooth process from start to finish - great work again and DAF remain my go-to travel agents.
Great service, thank you.
We were really impressed with every aspect of our experience and highly recommend Ethan.
Everything worked out perfectly
Edward Scudder is an asset to your company. Not only did he alleviate any worries I had. But his overall professionalism was fantastic. I’m advising friends and family to use DialAFlight
Very efficient!
Been with DialAFlight for a few years and always receive the best service. They are very helpful and responsible.
Tommy was fantastic - the whole trip ran smoothly and would definitely reccomend
Harvey and Abbie were brilliant... please tell them!
Keep up the good work and looking forward to my next travel with you!
Excellent support
Excellent, attentive, personal service
I wouldn't use anyone else to book our holiday/flights. From luxury holidays to daughter's gap year flights. Joe Orton sorted everything. He found us an upgrade to First Class and the BA service to Santiago was very impressive and was definitely worth doing as it's a 15 hour flight. But we flew back from Buenos Aires and the BA business class was very disappointing, as was the food. Very poor.
Marshall a superstar as always
Everything went well
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
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