Do your research but always book a Premium Tour

**Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years - I know the place.**
**I have personally completed 2,300+ Private Experiences (over 6,000+ guests) since April 2011 and I am considered one of the finest Private Tour Guides in Asia.**

**A blog post with a difference**
**Please do visit Hong Kong in 2025 | Travel, Tourism, Tours, Tips, Daily Life and my personal thoughts on Hong Kong.**
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Insider tip - Book a Premium Private Tour of Hong Kong

Do your research but always book a Premium Tour

Why you should book a Private Tour when you visit Hong Kong

“Opting for a Premium Private Tour of Hong Kong eliminates the need to accommodate the preferences of other travellers, giving you unmatched flexibility and the ability to modify your itinerary as you go. This level of personalization and freedom is the primary reason that so many travellers prefer Premium Quality Private Tours over cheaper Group Tours or Free Tours and always remember - you get what you pay for!”

I have personally completed 2,330 Premium Quality Private tours of Hong Kong

If you are considering coming to Hong Kong you have choices if you want to book a tour (or not!)

You can choose to explore Hong Kong on your own, using your smart phone, apps and Wikipedia | Instagram | You Tube
You can choose to do a Hotel Coach Tour
You can choose to do a Big Bus Tour
You can choose to go on a Free Tour
You can choose to go on a Group Tour (Cultural or Foodie or both) with anywhere from 6 - 20 participants
You can choose to go on a proper Food Tour as opposed to a more Culture “based” tour
You can choose to go on a Private Tour

13 reasons to book a Private Tour of Hong Kong

The size of the group is limited to 1 - 6 people
Itineraries customised to your personal specifications with unrivalled flexibility
Go at your own pace based on your personal dynamics and circumstances
You can choose the date and starting time and it can cost a lot less than you think!
Beat the crowds! you will absolutely maximise the time for actual sightseeing
You get a local resident | expert with an insiders knowledge of Hong Kong - the ultimate benefit
Flexibility on changing the itinerary during the tour if required
An opportunity to make amazing memories with family and friends
An in-depth learning and participation experience
You will get a great value for money experience and you will get the best guides
The undivided attention of your Private Tour Guide
Going from attractions A to B to C to D to E seamlessly and hassle free with an expert
You will absolutely have a lot more fun! (p.s. and someone to take your picture!)

You get what you pay for

I do NOT use the term Premium Quality lightly, it has been my mantra ever since I pioneered the Private Tour Market in Hong Kong back in 2010 when I put up a very basic website and then researched the hell out of the market, I got my first tour booking in April 2011 and the rest is history. Very quickly new companies entered the market and we all became firm friends and set up a chat group which is still going strong today to share tips, market intelligence, referrals and such and each and every one of us is committed to providing a PREMIUM QUALITY TOUR of Hong Kong.

… and yes, I am always promoting my friends businesses, there are times when I cannot do tours and my friends step up to the plate, they are awesome people.

In general a Private Tour of Hong Kong is booked by visitors who may only have 24 - 48 hours to discover and explore Hong Kong and you need a very experienced person to maximise the time you have, despite all the new tech available with online maps and apps (which I never use) most of them are quite useless in getting you from A to B to C in a timely fashion, there is simply NO substitute for a long term resident who is passionate and knows Hong Kong like the back of their hands.

You must absolutely read the Tripadvisor reviews of any company you are considering, they can be very revealing and beware of certain tour companies who get hundreds of reviews where the reviewer has done precisely one review and they are always glowing 5 star reviews, one company in particular was famous for free tours and they have now morphed into paid tours as well, as a Free Tour Company they were appalling but now all they get is 5 star reviews! I have seen this review manipulation many times since I first listed on Tripadvisor in 2011.

I am still a top drawer guide | advisor | consultant in the Tour business and the big mistake people make is booking the cheapest option, if ever there was a business that exemplified the old saying “you get what you pay for” it is the Private Tour Business and in Hong Kong for any type of Tour business, I have always had the highest prices but I deliver a top quality Private Tour of Hong Kong, it is Premium Quality and all my friends are about quality as well.

For some reason in Hong Kong a lot of Private Tour Companies will not accept a booking more than 6 months in advance, I have never understood this, particularly as people on Cruises who are looking for a shore excursion like to book a year in advance, you need to check this as chances are if you wait to long to book your preferred company may already be booked.

If you are booking a Private Tour then generally you make contact with the company by email, it is not a good idea to send a one line enquiry and one that suggests you are talking with other tour companies as well, the more personal and detailed the enquiry, the faster the response will be.

For many travellers, the idea of using a Private Tour Guide may be foreign idea (no pun intended). When people hear “Private Tour,” most think of it as something only intended for ultra-luxury travel or that it almost seems too personal… like “that’s a lot of time with one person and just us.” While it can cost more to take a Premium Private tour, the experience you get is usually more personal, meaningful, and fun. And hopefully, built just for you and your family or group.

As my friends in the business will tell you, I have very strong feelings about companies such as Tripadvisor and Viator (which are the same company) who dominate the “booking a private tour market” and not in a positive meaningful way as I point out below, the worst part of it being is that any crap tour company can be listed first on tour offerings simply by agreeing to pay Tripadvisor and Viator more commission, actual quality of the tour is meaningless to these awful tour comapanies. I have never listed my tours on any OTA and worked freelance for a company called Tours by Locals and left them when they changed their policy to one that was all guides are created equal, they are NOT!

Book the tour directly through the Tour Companies website, you might find it to be much cheaper, companies like Viator, Klook, Tripadvisor, Get Your Guide, Tours by Locals and such generally charge the tour company a 25 - 30% commission for the privilege of listing on their site, on OTA sites (Online Travel Agencies) all tour companies are created equal, I find it amazing how they can make 1,000 private tours look exactly the same and they insist on extraneous twaddle like the tour itinerary with timing which is utterly nonsensical, if someone says you will spend 30 minutes at an attraction you can bet you will be there for an hour, timing does not respect reality!, it is also impossible to get a clear picture of who you are dealing with and their strengths and weaknesses, visiting the tour companies actual website will give you a much clearer picture of who you are dealing with. Personally I can see no good reason to book through an OTA, to me there is a complete lack of quality control with many companies with mediocre quality and reputations getting priority listings because they offer a bigger commission to the OTA and do not get me started on how companies can be listed at no. 1 in the rankings on Tripadvisor purely and simply because they have paid a large sum of money to do this.

I always like to say that you should try and book a private tour with the owner of the company, with J3 Private Tours, you got me, I had no guides on my payroll nor would I ever use freelance guides. Trust me, book the owner, it is normally quite clear on their website who that is.

Unless you are booking a food tour (where ideally you need to book the tour with a company with Hong Kong Chinese guides fluent in Cantonese and English) book a tour if possible with a guide where English is a native language and that they are a long term resident of Hong Kong, I do not speak Cantonese and that is not through lack of trying, my wife‛s first language is Cantonese but I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years. Communication is so important on a tour and trust me, there are many levels of English fluency in Hong Kong and what you should be looking for primarily is a Native English Speaker if possible, if you are communicating with the company you can normally get a pretty good idea of English fluency. I have always been open and honest about my pathetic Cantonese language ability!

Learn more | My blog post on the 13 reasons to book a Premium Private Tour of Hong Kong