If you are considering booking a Private Tour of Hong Kong make sure that your guide has strong English Language skills, check the Tour Companies website and Tripadvsior Reviews, this has a major bearing on the quality of your Private Tour.

I came across this quote whilst reading a paper on English Language in Tourism in Indonesia.

“However, the reality often shows that many tour guides have inadequate proficiency in English, but they are brave enough to conduct guiding”

This is the results of a questionnaire given to Tour Guides in Indonesia

Table 1. Target and learning needs

1 Why do you need English?

a. To communicate with foreigner 82.45%

2 What level of English do you have?

a. Speak a little bit of English 51.05%

b. Understand English but cannot speak well 34.00%

c. Understand English and is able to give response minimally 5%

d. Able to speak English fluently 5%

3 What kind of English skills do you need to be developed?

a. Listening 24.5%

b. Speaking 69.00%

4 What kinds of learning experience do you need? (the respondents

may give more than one answer)

a. Discussion 18%

b. Conversation 90.5%

The result of questionnaire shows that most of the local tour guides need English for

communicating with foreigner, it is proved by the percentage 82.45% from both groups’ respondents.

For the record most Hong Konger’s speak perfectly fine English and English is the sort of language which even if someone gets it “wrong” you know what they mean. I am always amazed that many Hong Kong Chinese speak Cantonese, Mandarin and English which puts me to shame.

However, I have lived here for 53 years so I am used to Hong Kong Chinese people and their English Language skills but this may not be the case for visitors who might assume that a high level of English fluency is prevalent here when in reality it is not, funnily enough I find older people are much more comfortable speaking English than the young folk, it is a confidence thing! our youngest son teaches English to Kindergarten Chinese kids and he loves his job!

Language as the Key to Success: How English Fluency Empowers Travel Agents in the Growing Travel Industry

Yep, a quote from Linkedin!

The other side of the coin is I have never felt that NOT speaking Cantonese has hindered me in any professional way living and working in Hong Kong, I have often felt frustrated at my own inability to grasp Cantonese but my fallback has always been my wife who is always there to translate if needs be.

Please take on board this practical advice as described in these 2 recent Tripadvisor Reviews.

Hong Kong has a rather unique history, 156 years of British Colonial rule ended in 1997 but English remains one of the 3 official languages along with Cantonese and Mandarin.

As I have mentioned above I have no language skills other than I have pretty much mastered my native language which is English, I am not embarrassed or ashamed about this deficiency, I am English and was hard wired to be dumb in learning languages!

I have made many attempts over the decades to learn Cantonese and my wife has been teaching me for 40+ years as it is her first language but with no success and in my defence I often get the impression that part of the problem is that Hong Kong Chinese do not believe a foreigner can master Cantonese (and to me they are correct) so if you try out some Cantonese phrases a blank look and a shrug of the shoulders is the standard response.

Part of the problem is that one word can have multiple meanings depending on the tone used!

My dumb gene runs in the family, only one of our 3 sons has mastered Cantonese!

The flip side to my language deficiencies is a positive one as it has certainly helped when it comes to getting bookings for my Private Tours of Hong Kong as visitors from English speaking countries know that there will be NO communication issues and it also helps that I have lived here for 53 years and counting.

I am part of an informal group of Private Tour Guide Companies in Hong Kong (and founder member) and I can tell you now that all of my friends have guides that are fluent in English and I mean really fluent, I promote my friends companies via this blog so it is easy to find them.

I should point out and as I have mentioned in other blog posts, I do NOT do Food Tours in Hong Kong despite eating in well over 1,200 Chinese restaurants here over the decades and the reason for this is because many restaurants do not have English Menu’s and a lot of the staff have no English fluency, it is not because I do not know Chinese food, I do! when you do a food tour in Hong Kong you will benefit greatly from having a local Hong Kong Chinese Guide!

I have personally been on Group Tours and Coach Tours in Hong Kong where the guide was a relatively young local Chinese guide, in a nutshell they learn a script and repeat it parrot like with no deviations throwing in silly scripted jokes, I was most recently on one of these tours some months ago with another Private Guide and the female guide (in her 40’s) was absolutely appalling, mainly screeching at the group, imitating a machine gun (I kid you not) and generally repeating incorrect facts about Hong Kong.

We tried to have a conversation with her and she was very hard to understand so it was impossible to have any sort of meaningful question and answer type conversation. so we gave up.

Please take into account that a great tour guide has to be more than totally fluent in English, they also have to be prepared NOT to work from learned scripts and repeat out of date facts and figures, they should tell the Hong Kong story as it is, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Hong Kong is a fabulous city and place to live but it is not perfect, utopia is not a word you apply to Hong Kong, I love to engage my guests with in depth observations about living in Hong Kong and not many people are comfortable with doing that, perhaps it is a cultural thing? but I have lived here for 53 years and have quite a unique perspective on what makes Hong Kong tick.

…. and on a humorous note, I have done 3 tours where my guests did not speak any English (2 from India and 1 from Russia) family members booked the tours for them in English and I knew in advance that they did not speak English, it was an interesting experience (s) and one that I will not repeat

Finally, I quite often get requests for to do tours from visitors from all the major European countries and also from South America, I have friends in the business who have private guides who are totally fluent in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian etc and I always make referrals to them… I find that visitors from Scandinavian Countries have a very high level of English fluency.

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