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**Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong for 52 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.**

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Thank you to all the 6,000 + wonderful guests I had over the years and the sheer joy it gave me to introduce Hong Kong - Pearl of the Orient to you.

The aim of this blog post is to get you to seriously think about how you choose a company to do a Private Tour of Hong Kong and hopefully that does NOT include VIATOR

I will be blunt, I am a nobody in the overall scheme of things partly because I am just one of 8 billion people on the planet and partly because social media is destroying the very fabric of civilised society, I have an inactive account on Facebook for many years now, I stay well away from making any comment on X but I do have a presence on Instagram because I like to show of my collection of 100,000+ car images that I have taken., I find it remarkable that on social media really dumb idiots can amass millions of followers (or reverse darwinism as I call it)

So my wife and 3 adult kids in jest agree that I am a nobody but the reality is I was not a nobody in the field of offering Private Tours of Hong Kong.

I was a pioneer of Private Tours of Hong Kong, putting up a website in 2010 and doing my first private tour in early April 2011 and between then and early February 2020 I completed 2,324 private tours of Hong Kong and was widely considered to be one of the best private tour guides in Asia. I was the first to offer Private Tours of Hong Kong and I was swiftly followed by my friends a few months later and into 2012 and 2013.

In late January 2020 partial lockdowns and such started in response to Covid and Hong Kong was closed off and isolated from tourists for literally 3 years and the inactivity exacerbated some health issues I had and I was forced to retire due to my being unable to walk for long periods of time certainly doing 6 - 8 hour tours became out of the question and over 60% of my tours where of that length.

There are 4 links to articles underneath my image above that I have written relevant to this post, if you have the time, please read them, they are very detailed and preferably before you make a booking for a Private Tour of Hong Kong.

If I go back in time to 2010 | 2011, when it came to choosing a private tour guide you had limited options, as there was basically no one doing it, fortunately I had been promoting my website and my blog posts on Google so my name was out there and always on page 1 of Google basically because there was zero competition. Viator was not even remotely anything like it is now in 2024 and Tripadvisor was just a review company.

Fortunately Google still works pretty well when it comes to recommending great Private Tour Companies in Hong Kong although regretfully Viator and other OTA’S are generally ranked in the top 3 because they can afford to spend a ton of money on Social Media Marketing and paying to be ranked 1, 2 and 3.

Personally I am never quite sure why people book on VIATOR, there website is horrible, with potentially hundreds of companies offering tours, the tour pages are incredibly complex, getting correct pricing is a real exercise and basically you have no idea who is offering the experience and more importantly what is the quality of the company and the guide offering the tour.

Typical Viator Itinerary 8 Hour Tour P1

Typical Viator Itinerary 8 Hour Tour P2

One of the most irritating aspects of the VIATOR tour pages is the so called itinerary which to me is utterly meaningless and this is where a lot of companies make themselves look foolish with incorrect information ie facts and figures, timing and such, this is one of the primary reasons I never listed on VIATOR, I wanted total control over what information I gave out, VIATOR goes the opposite direction, way too much information and NO fact checking as well as every experience looks exactly like every other experience, it is the guide who makes or breaks a tour and that is that., I have no idea why VIATOR has not grasped that concept, well that is not true, they simply do not care because they are a juggernaut, they offer globally over 300,000 experiences and clearly people like what they see and they book without doing any checking and clearly a nobody like me vs the juggernaut that is VIATOR is no contest.

So frankly, they simply do not care if their offerings a low quality and I have been studying their review system (Tripadvisor and VIATOR) since 2010 and you would be amazed at how easy it is to manipulate, there is one major tour company in Hong Kong who operate two tour companies and out of nowhere their main company has gotten over 500 reviews in 2024 nearly all 5 star and the overwhelming majority posted by people posting their first review, they recently lost 50 reviews because of suspected manipulation and replaced them with new ones in a matter of 3 weeks! clearly they are offering an incentive to people to write 5 star reviews because they are NOT that good and the style of tour they do is not compatible with every tour getting a 5 star review. Unfortunately it seems to be working for them and VIATOR are not trying that hard to crack down on their shenanigans.

So I will go the through the Itinerary stops one by one but I will state that the times for each stop are to be completely ignored, they have no meaning and tour guides who run tours by the clock have no business being a tour guide, timing is what it is and that comes with experience, I would never, ever give a guest time estimates like the above and I would change the itinerary at the drop of a hat if needed, of course that is easy for me to say, I did 2,324 quality private tours of Hong Kong in 9 years.

Victoria Peak - the description is fine but the timing is all off, just getting to and from the Peak will take more than 45 minutes unless you take a very fast taxi - sometimes you can wait over an hour just to ride on the Peak Tram
HSBC - it is NOT the oldest and first bank in Hong Kong | the first bank was Oriental Bank Corporation which was formed in London in 1845 and opened a branch in Hong Kong also in 1845 - HSBC did not form in Hong Kong until 1860, 15 years later
The old town reference to Hollywood Road is a dumb new term given to the area along Hollywood Road ie “Old Town Central” by the Hong Kong Tourism Board in 2017 (I wrote about it in a blog post) it is a nice place to visit although generally it was not somewhere I visited, average tour guides love it thought because they can fill half the tour length just walking along one road!
Man Mo Temple - is NOT even close to being the oldest Chinese Temple in Hong Kong, the Tin Hau Temple in Joss House Bay dates back to the 1260’s, the Man Mo Temples dates back to 1847 - 1862! personally I never go there, the reason people go there is because it is on Hollywood Road so convenience is the reason for the visit, I go to a much more interesting temple in Kowloon
Cat Street Market - these are mainly “antiques” you buy on market stalls littering Cat Street, in other words antiques is a relative term and again people go there simply because it is a hundred yards from the Man Mo Temple
Sheung Wan - well Man Mo Temple and Cat Street are in Sheung Wan and you are still on Hollywood Road, they fail to mention a major historical site which is where the British planted the flag on Possession Street in 1841 not to far from the Man Mo Temple
Wanchai - I like Wanchai, no issue there assuming they do the Blue House and the Pak Tai Temple
Aberdeen Fishing Village - one of the advantages I have over my much young tour guide friends is that I have lived in Hong Kong for 52 years and Aberdeen really was a fishing village in the 1970’s and 1980’s (and I lived in Aberdeen in the early 1980’s) but that image is long gone decades ago and now it is a joke to say that it is a fishing village - all the so called “fisher people” now live in Public Housing Estates in the surrounding areas and many of them hold down regular jobs on land, frankly it is a waste of time to go there particularly since the demise of the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, it is the worst sort of tourist trap and still very much favoured by coach tour companies, I should also point out that it is a long way from town on the South Side of Hong Kong Island, time to get there and back and chug around the harbour - 1 hour minimum to 2 hours not 20 minutes
Victoria Harbour - magnificent as long as you take the iconic Star Ferry across the harbour and view Hong Kong Island from Kowloon not the other way round, they make no mention of this at all, how can you come to Hong Kong and NOT take the Star Ferry! - in a nutshell, you see Hong Kong from the Peak and Hong Kong Island across the harbour from Kowloon.
The Chi Lin Nunnery and the Nan Lian Gardens are one and the same split down the middle by a major road and I always made it a priority to try and go there and the timing is about right although it is so photogenic I often stayed much longer
Prince Edward is in Mong Kok so they should be treated as one location and why anyone would go to Sneaker Street which is simply a few shops selling brand name sneakers is beyond me and I have to say I always enjoyed the markets but with markets all aspects of time go out of the window!
So the itinerary timing comes to 345 minutes which is 5 hours and 45 mintes and yet the tour is supposed to be an 8 hour tour, this is the problem with doing timing to suit VIATOR, like I said meaningless.
To be blunt, this is NOT a tour itinerary I ever did in 2,324 tours, all too often these days itineraries are done to suit the Tour Guide and not the guest, I was simply focused on giving the best possible tour, all to often these days people love to promote “Old Town Central” because there are some quite interesting things along Hollywood Road so you kill 5 birds with one stone but it is not something I would ever do because as interesting as it is, there are actually much more interesting places when you choose the right Tour Company!
I am also quite sure that VIATOR will penalise you if you go off the published itinerary.
My advice is where possible you should NOT book a tour with a fixed itinerary (Unless you go to the Big Buddha and Tai O on Lantau Island) choose a company that offers a 6 to 8 hour with a flexible itinerary, after all you are paying big bucks for a quality tour, a great tour guide will be able to come up with a plan within 5 minutes of meeting you and the more times you do this the more experience you get in planning a changeable itinerary on the fly.

Page rankings are meaningless on VIATOR, companies pay a hefty commission to VIATOR to list and the more they pay the higher the algorithm lists their offering, they could get terrible reviews and offer the worst tours in Hong Kong but are ranked at the top of the page… how is that helping the consumer?

Given that Tripadvisor is still the only game in town reviews wise and you to have to factor in that Tripadvisor owns Viator, to me it is a major conflict of interest.

So in a nutshell because basically all the tours use the same template there is NO way to determine how good the company really is, there is no company information, there is NO information about the guides, there is nothing to even hint at the suitability of these companies to offer a quality private tour of Hong Kong unless you can find their website.

I have always and I mean always offered this advice

The quality of the private tour you are doing is completely and utterly dependent on the quality of the guide

and yes on VIATOR there is no guide page, you are at the complete mercy of the company that is offering the tour.

This is my private tour website : j3tourshongkong.com

I still have it up there even though I no longer offer tours but it shows you the vast difference between someone who offers a quality product and someone who is just an aggregator like VIATOR - my pricing is simple, my offerings are very straight forward, you pretty much know everything about me and more importantly when you booked a tour with J3 Private Tours you were booking a tour with me Jamie, if for any reason I could not do the tour I would recommend they contacted my trusted friends and I still do that today.

.. and that really is the crux of the matter, your fabulous Hong Kong experience all boils down to the quality of your tour guide.

Sadly and I really do mean sadly, the quality of tour guides in Hong Kong is quite poor, we have over 5,500 registered guides who are basically taught how to deal with 20+ people rushing around Hong Kong on a bus, their training to someone like me is simply a waste of time and then you have the potential problem of English Fluency which I have dealt with in other posts - I was born to be a private tour guide and my mission was always very simple, to offer the very best tour I could every time.

I lost some bookings because I refused to give an itinerary in advance (generally people take your itinerary and shop it around to get a cheaper price) I lost other bookings because I was given a list of 20 “sites” which had to be seen in 5 hours, I lost bookings because I refused to do car tours (I have my reasons which I have answered in detail on other posts) I lost bookings because I preferred to do tours with a maximum of 6 guests and yes, I lost bookings because a big part of my tour was using Hong Kong’s brilliant public transport and is an integral part of Hong Kong Culture.

In other words I had principles and 95% of the time I was paid in CASH at the end of the tour, think about that for a second, quite a few times I called a halt on tours 2 hours into the tour because of really bad weather and refused to accept payment, I also had quite a few tours where my guests became ill and again I proposed cancellation without payment and finally there where the ones that simply never turned up at the Hotel, Cruise Port or Airport - thankfully this was not a common occurrence and reality dictated that they would never, ever pay me even though legally I was entitled.

Try doing this on VIATOR, once they have been paid in advance you are simply a commodity, do you honestly think that a company that offers 300,000 experiences every day as any interest in a single client?

Looking back, right from day one I was always the most expensive company offering private tours in Hong Kong but I made sure I had the best product so to speak, I refused to get involved in bidding wars and I always refused to compromise on quality and that is why you should contact my friends directly on the link I have provided above, they share similar qualities to me and I have forgiven them doing some listings on VIATOR!

I think it is absolutely vital that you study their website and guide bio’s, something you cannot do on VIATOR.

I should point out that I am NOT saying that there are not some quality listings on VIATOR, some of my friends list on there for some tours as they have guides they need to keep happy, what I am saying is that unless you play detective and try and work out from reviews who the actual company is you will not have an opportunity to check out their company website and guide page and please bear in mind, the reviews on VIATOR are for tours booked through VIATOR, the company website will have a link to ALL of their reviews on Tripadvisor and that can be quite revealing.

**The VIATOR Lowest Price Guarantee**

I think this is a load of rubbish and I am not sure how you could ever prove it, it is to me just marketing gibberish with no practical value and I can tell you this from experience, companies that compete on price tend to have the worst quality product (s) | service (s) | offerings

Learn more | Go here for the VERY BEST TOUR COMPANIES IN hONG kONG

I think by now you will have realised I am quite passionate about this subject, VIATOR has 178 offerings for Private Tours of Hong Kong and hundreds more for tours that are NOT private, there are basically by my estimate only about 12 companies in Hong Kong who are very committed to offering the very best Hong Kong Tours and these are my friends and we have our own society for want of a better term and we communicate daily by Whatsapp, Phone and meet on a regular basis, this has being ongoing since early 2014.

So before I wind this post up and before you die of boredom, here are some things to consider.

many companies who list tours on VIATOR do NOT pick up guests from their Hotel, I understand this for the typical coach tours that have 25 tourists and a poor quality quide but for a private tour, this is a fundamental priority, you always pick up your guests from the Hotel and drop them back there unless they specify otherwise.
where possible you should try to take the tour with the OWNER of the company, take it from me after having completed 2,324 private tours it is by far the best option, a salaried guide is simply not as committed as the owner (s) of the company, this is a point some of my friends disagree with me on but they know I am right., it is generally not difficult from the company website to learn who this is. Basically on VIATOR the company offering the tour has no way to show the actual guide which means they could choose anyone from the “guide pool” and you have absolutely no way to offer input as to their choice, it is sad to say but most tour guides in Hong Kong are poorly paid, poorly trained and to them it is just a job ….. and that sucks but that should not stop them from putting in a 100% effort and remember the quality of the tour and your enjoyment of it is 100% dependant on the guide.
many of the tour offerings on VIATOR have no option to change the itinerary once the tour starts, it is totally set in stone, one of my many talents (!) was my ability to make changes in an instant assuming it was feasible within the tour time frame, in quite a few instances I went over the allotted time of the tour to ensure the guest was happy, at no extra charge of course.
Be wary (!) of companies that use the horrible cliches “hidden gems” and “secret spots” I have written 2 posts on these 2 phrases, none of what I said was complimentary, since social media took over the world and more specifically the past 5 years the terms are just dumb, even in Hong Kong, every remotely interesting spot has been visited, recorded on a the phone video, photographed and posted a million times (you know what I mean even if I exaggerate) and all of these mainly young people have done is spoil the enjoyment for others and all they are interested in is the photo (and heavily filtered at that) they have no concept or understanding of the significance of the “spot” and they simply move on to the next one, ie go to the spot, pose in a stupid manner for a photograph, post to Instagram for 10,000 - 100,000 likes…. talk about diluting the wonders of tourism and visiting new places!
I do not think it even occurs to “influencers” or Joe Public at large that heavily edited and filtered images distort reality, we have plenty of Instagram spots in Hong Kong that look nothing like the Instagram image in real life, up close and personal

…..and last but not least a subject I am very vocal about and that is visiting Victoria Peak or the Peak on Hong Kong Island and I have written many blog posts on this matter.

If you visit Hong Kong you MUST visit Victoria Peak even if you only have 2 hours to spare for sightseeing.

The issue is simply that the vast majority of Tour Companies in Hong Kong and particularly those on VIATOR and other OTA’s do NOT take you to the spot for the greatest panoramic city view in the world and sadly I have learnt over the years that the primary reason is timing, in other words, the guide is simply too lazy to take their guests to the spot.

.. and yes, it is called unofficially “Jamie’s spot at the Peak” and officially the LUGARD ROAD LOOKOUT.

To me it is simply incomprehensible that guides will not take their guests there, from the Peak Tower it is a gentle and very interesting 20 minute walk there and 20 minutes back and a view that takes your breath away, nothing else you will do on your tour will match this one experience, Hong Kong is defined by this one view.

If this helps, I have been there over 6,000 times since 1972.

Instead the overwhelming majority of guides go to either the Peak Tower 428 Sky Terrace (you have a pay and it is not cheap) or the Lions Pavilion which is a couple of hundred yards away, same view but free of charge, both of these locations are essentially at where you get on and off the Peak Tram.

Trust me the views cannot compare on ANY level to the view from the Lugard Road Lookout and trust me you will know why when you stand there even on cloudy days.

Looking at my images below is one thing, seeing it with your own eyes is an experience not to be missed, oh and my images below are NOT filtered., I have a very expensive camera with a great lens.

That, Ladies and Gentleman is that, I hope you have a good read of this and my other articles and if you are coming to Hong Kong remember it is the guide that makes the difference between a poor tour, a good tour, a great tour and an outstanding tour.