Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Excellent service as always!
Fantastic. Everything was perfect, will definitely use again!
As always a great service from Jeff who was happy to investigate various routes to my destination. And always reassuring to know that DialAFlight is there to support should something go wrong. Another wonderful holiday.
Excellent properly describes the service provided by Fergus and his team. I will return later this year.
I had to rearrange my schedule and Hannah came up with a very acceptable new schedule. She is a credit to your company and would make it my first choice for another trip.
You should be aware that Hotel Orchidacea has many steps. We were on the lowest level but it was still a climb of 117 steps from reception to the room. There are no lifts in the building. One of our party is asthmatic and found it hard going. All else, staff, rooms and food were all great
Great service from Ian Newton
Liam was excellent with all the help he gave us.
Very helpful, kept us up to date and all worked well
A trouble free trip from start to finish.Thank you Reece.
A help sheet re transfers from the airports would be useful.
Thanks again for all the help you gave us. Big thanks to Hannah
Very pleased with the help and advice from Reggie. We will definitely be in touch next time we need to book a holiday or flight.
Long time between flights meant 9 hours in Singapore airport, extended to 11 with delays.
In future please make clear whether a group booking is genuinely a group booking. We booked as a 4 but ended up as 2 x 2s which meant we weren’t sat together
Guy does a great job of looking after our interests and keeping us informed along the way. Highly commendable.
Didn’t tell us about SG arrival card entering Singapore on our phones .
Finn was a great help
I found Singapore Airlines excellent
As always Rupert did a grand job and the holiday was a success. Great advice as always
Love the follow through - checking all OK before flight
Ivor did it again, providing excellent service and support and ensuring that our holiday was tailored to our needs.
Always book with DialAFlight never had a problem
Very helpful staff, especially Sarah and Julie - would definitely recommend this company
Great follow up and if needed to phone, always answered promptly
I’ve used Jerry for the last 20 years and he gives excellent advice. We went to NZ and Singapore, great flight with Singapore Airlines and stayed in an excellent hotel in Singapore
If you have any other customers going to Singapore suggest you advise them to fill in immigration form online before travelling. It is very lengthy and a pain to do at the airport.
Despite a hiccup relating to the transfer from Singapore to Desaru everything went according to plan.
Seymour is a great advisor and everything he set up was perfect and as promised.
Spot on again
A Sikh in starched white uniform suddenly appears and scrunches across the gravel drive to greet me, his white beard almost merging with his turban. I hadn't seen him emerge from the building but he somehow seemed to materialise from nowhere.
This could only be Raffles, one of the most famous hotel names in the world.
I am whisked into the cool embrace of the lobby, where a glass of chilled mineral water arrives almost before I've had a chance to park myself on a leather sofa.
The brand-new atrium is not that different from the old one. It has cleaner, sharper lines, but retains the same bold sweep that suggests an impressive and desirable combination of elegance and sophistication.
It was here that, according to some reports, 300 Japanese officers and men fell on their swords after the surrender of Singapore to the Allies in 1945.
But such grisly ghosts hardly hit the right note following a multi-million-pound refurbishment that has taken two-and-a-half years to complete. It officially reopened in the summer of 2019.
The hotel says the restoration was designed to ensure that everything that is so special about Raffles was carefully preserved – the ambience, the service, the charm and the heritage of the hotel. They have certainly succeeded in that.
There are still the graceful courtyards to relax in, while new bars, restaurants and shops have been added.
The changes have simply enhanced the comfort and splendour.
Raffles Singapore was born in 1887, the year the Armenian Sarkies brothers took over an unprepossessing ten-bedroom bungalow and set about pulling in the great and the good.
From such humble beginnings, the hotel was quickly expanded and word of mouth brought in royalty, as well as celebrities.
It was named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who colonised Singapore 200 years ago for the British East India Company and became Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies. It was a bold move to summon up this heroic, swashbuckling frontiersman – but, my goodness, it has paid off.
Noel Coward first stayed for a month in 1931, after completing Private Lives. He recalled in his memoirs drinking his first Singapore Sling and he remained a loyal guest until his final visit in 1968.
The literary roll call is impressive – Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, French novelist, art historian and statesman Andre Malraux, German-born poet, novelist and painter Hermann Hesse and Chilean poet and politician Pablo Neruda for starters.
Then there are the glamorous fans: Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor and, more recently, Johnny Depp and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
There are 115 guest-rooms, all suites. I am shown into a State Room Suite overlooking the quad, with a huge marble bathroom and a bath the size of a small cargo vessel.
The double sink seems excessive for one man and his toothbrush. Ditto the opulent bed. But I'm not complaining.
The flat-screen TV has been discreetly inlaid into the wall so that it looks like a decorative obsidian plaque. 'I think we should pop down to the Long Bar and take a refreshment,' says my charming hotel guide.
Good idea. First, I pop into the Writers Bar, taking in the cool granite and mahogany, contrasting with marble and alabaster walls. It's as 'airy as a birdcage', as Conrad put it in his novella The End Of The Tether.
I wander down the colonnaded corridors and around the green quadrangle before settling at a table in the Long Bar.
A cast-iron hand-cranked contraption on the bar, designed for shaking multiple cocktails, gets to work producing the hotel's signature drink, the Singapore Sling. It is a powerful concoction made from Cointreau, pineapple and lime juice, gin, grenadine, cherry liqueur, Benedictine and Angostura bitters. That's all.
Order this in my local back home and the barman would think I was taking the mickey. Here, it's the most natural thing in the world.
First published in the Daily Mail - March 2020
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