Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Keep on doing what you do best
Everything was planned to precision and went smoothly. An exceptional holiday and service provided
I have been using your company for over 10 yrs and have no regret. Nice staff and good approach with listening skills.
Michael very helpful
Once again Darryll at DialAflight and his team delivered what they promised. The flight, hotel and all other information were spot on.
I had a wonderful time. Brought back so many memories. Thank you
Advise any clients leaving from BHX that they need plenty of time to get up to departure gates and through security. It was a shambles there on the day that I flew out.
Hassle free, thank you.
Always satisfied with service. Daniel knows exactly what is right for me and I appreciate the time he takes to help me through all the decisions. Wouldn't go anywhere else
Yet again Edward kept us informed up until the day we left, phoning several times to enquire and confirm things. Well done
You are so much better to book with. We appreciated the personal attention, the care, the way we could phone with queries as they arose. We will certainly recommend and use your services again. It is a joy to speak to your staff at the end of the line!
As usual. Fantastic holiday. Thank you Des for all your help and support arranging supporting and recommending this fabulous hotel.
As always I have nothing but praise for your service. I will be back and am also spreading the word!
Nicky made the whole process a breeze. Top class customer service.
Poor service from Etihad airlines on 2 of 4 flights tarnished this trip. Still awaiting a response from Etihad
Excellent customer service
Have been using DialAFlight for 20+ years. Always excellent service. Travis in particular is always so helpful and makes you feel you're his only client.
Thanks for the advice and guidance!
Billy has exceeded our expectations.
Great to have the pick up at the airport
Arthur was so helpful he went above and beyond to ensure we had a good holiday. Highly recommend.
incredible service as always. Thank you Dexter
Can not thank you enough for your wonderful service. I have given your number to my friends and family. Highly recommended
I had loads of issues due to flight cancellation but no fault of DialAFlight
It was 5 star all the way
Always recommending you to our friends
Helpful and dependable as always
Everything was great from booking our holiday to arriving back home. Special thanks to Helen Jones for taking care of it all, great job.
As usual, the whole process was made easy and we received excellent service from DialAFlight. Continue to recommend to everyone!
Kennedy is a pleasure to deal with and always gives us the best advice on the UAE products.
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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