Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Very friendly staff
Amazing, thank you Courtney!
Thank you Rebecca Wilkie
All good as promised and helpful Mr Harvey
Ewan understood our requirements clearly and put together an excellent itinerary. We'll be coming back - once we've saved up!
The flight from London to Manchester was rescheduled by BA as not enough time in between flights.
The itinerary worked perfectly.. some delays of course (as ever) but good flights and seats. Virgin Dreamliner excellent
The attention to detail you get from the staff is amazing. Knowing you have 24/7 back up is very reassuring. Many thanks to Amy and the team for everything. They are always there to help.
When our Air Tahiti flight was cancelled you moved us to Air France quickly and helpfully. Many thanks!
So helpful and efficient and your app is great too!
Excellent work
I recommend you all the time
The trip was amazing and all the flights worked perfectly
Awesome. Just excellent
All went very well
Very good service = been using this for my last three trips aboard and will use them again
Nicole and her team were wonderful! She went to such great lengths to find suitable flights and then willingly helped me with so many issues over the formal requirements. I honestly couldn't have made this trip without her. Always a cheerful and calming voice on the other end of the line when I was on the verge of panic. I can't thank her enough!
All in all, my trip went well. Mission accomplished. Thank you and looking forward to book again in the future.
Grant is a great asset to your company and has been helping us holiday since 2012.
Very good service. Thanks to Jessica and Howard and the rest of the team.
Good experience
Brilliant holiday in Bora Bora and Tahiti!
We were delighted with everything DialAFlight did, from the original organisation and booking to changing flights because of the coronavirus outbreak and alerting us to floods in New Zealand that affected our plans. Brilliant from start to finish and special thanks to Marco who went above and beyond to help and advise. I would definitely recommend DialAFlight.
I’m all in favour of security checks but we had to stand in a queue of about 1000 people at LA to get through immigragtion. Of the 44 kiosks available 2 were in use initially which went up to 6 after 1 1/2 hours as they returned from lunch. One airport I will definitely avoid in the future.
Whole trip went well apart from both Air NZ flights being delayed. Thankfully it did not cause any problems.
Toby was very helpful and picked lovely hotels. Made our honeymoon memorable.
Jake was so helpful and he helped us with a payment plan. I would highly recommend your service to our friends.
Jamie was excellent and very responsive to my queries.
Samuel was very helpful, our holiday was great.
Reece was very helpful and professional. I will definitely use DialAFlight again - excellent
Frankly, I was at the bottom of the learning curve when it came to Tampa. I had heard of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the local football team, but that was about it. Most British visitors to Florida make a bee-line for Orlando and Miami.
But the old pecking order is changing fast. That's probably why Virgin Atlantic, scenting a winner, is now offering direct flights to Tampa. Parts of the city are run down; public transport is pretty basic. Tampa has been up, down, up again, down again, like one of the rollercoasters in Busch Gardens, the family theme park to the north of the city centre.
But its overall trajectory is emphatically up. I stayed for three nights at the spanking new JW Marriott hotel, in the heart of Tampa, and had a blast.
The city combines the dynamism of 21st-century America with just a hint of old-fashioned Southern charm. It is quite a cocktail - and Floridians love their cocktails.
All around the sunlit bay, I unearthed parks and museums, terrific bars and restaurants, quirky neighbourhoods and, best of all, a wealth of history.
In its heyday, Tampa was known as Cigar City, thanks to Vicente Ybor, a Spanish born entrepreneur who moved here in the 19th century, bought up swampland, then lured thousands of Cuban migrant workers to join him. Soon Ybor City, as the area became known, was turning out more cigars than anywhere else on the planet. No longer, alas.
But I would not have missed Ybor City for anything. Like Little Italy in New York, or the French Quarter in New Orleans, it encapsulates the American Dream - beautiful but fragile - in perfect miniature.
After disembarking from a rickety old streetcar, I soon found myself in a rabbit warren of scruffy streets, some overrun with chickens, some featuring bars and businesses, both weird and wonderful. 'Save a horse, ride a cowboy,' read one sign. 'The only shop in Tampa where death and dysfunction dance a graceful ballet,' boasted another, with dusty skeletons in the window.
Should I risk it? Or play safe and visit the more sedate-looking J. C. Newman Cigar Factory and Museum? I played safe. I am scared of skeletons.
Newman is not just a world renowned company, but the last operational cigar manufacturer in Tampa. Watching highly skilled workers cut tobacco and hand-roll cigars with such loving care was a revelation.
Vicente Ybor wanted to build a community, not just churn out cigars. The 19th-century migrant workers were well housed, got a good education and, after work, met at a Cuban club, of which a local guide gave me a tour. It was built on a palatial scale, with a ballroom fit for a king.
Lunch beckoned - and what a lunch. The family-run Columbia restaurant has been a fixture in Ybor City since 1905. I have never had Spanish food of this calibre outside of Spain. Unable to decide between the grilled snapper and the shrimp and crabmeat casserole, I had both and was soon whinnying for more. Olé!
If Ybor City evokes Tampa past, Hyde Park Village, across the bay, embodies its future.
It's a substantial urban development, less than ten years old, beside a much older residential area - the sleepy pre-war Tampa of shady streets, rocking chairs on porches and tattered Stars and Stripes fluttering overhead.
There are no rocking chairs in Hyde Park Village because everyone is on the move: joggers, dog walkers, teenagers on electric scooters, friends snatching a coffee before repairing to their laptops. The village has already become a magnet for young people working in the creative industries. They hang out in shared work spaces and, after hours, meet at the sort of bars where everyone knows everyone else and the cocktails flow like water.
Want to watch an arthouse movie in a funky bistro? Here's your chance. Or eat excellent Italian food in stylish surroundings? Look no further than Timpano, another humdinger of a restaurant.
For lovers of museums and galleries, the new Tampa Riverwalk is another must, linking a string of visitor attractions, from the vibrant Tampa Museum of Art to the Henry B. Plant Museum, an oasis of tranquillity.
I had brunch at the nearby Oxford Exchange, a much-loved Tampa institution. Part cafe, part shop, the Exchange is a lovingly crafted shrine to books. They even present your bill discreetly folded into a dusty old novel. Class.
.
On my last morning, I had breakfast in Goody Goody, a retro American diner, then took a mini powerboat out into the bay.
The views were so thrilling that I nearly disturbed a nesting pelican just 50 yards from the general hospital.
My final port of call was Sparkman Wharf. Millennials in shorts and T-shirts sipped craft beer in refurbished shipyard crates, soaked up the sun and yakked about baseball, love and life without a care in the world.
It was hard to drag myself away to catch my plane home.
But isn't that true of all great cities? They leave you wanting more.
First published in the Daily Mail - November 2022
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