Private Tours or Public Group Tours - what exactly do you specialise in?

Private Tours only, full stop.

I do not do any sort of public group tours, it just isn’t my thing, I focus on quality private tours, there is no comparison between doing a private tour rather than a public group tour with 10, 20, 30+ people and certain Hong Kong Tour Companies just offer a rubbish product and offer prices that are just dumb and yes, I have been on these group tours recently in the interests of research.

… and for foodies, a small, yes 8 people or less, is a fine way to eat your way through Hong Kong, I know all the best companies and I am happy to make a recommendation.

Finally not all Public Group Tour Companies in Hong Kong are rubbish, not all of them are equal but some are more equal than others! please choose wisely, again I would be happy to make a recommendation.

Last-minute bookings and how to book

Yes, I take last-minute bookings, but I work on a first come, first served basis. A booking can land through the form with no prior contact at all. The practical cut-off is 24 hours before the proposed start. I do get notes at 9am asking for a 10am start. That is rarely possible. No harm in asking.

If you would rather not use the booking form, email me or use the Contact button and send the basics: names, date, start time, number of hours, hotel or meeting point, and anything else that matters. Forms are a hassle. I know that.

I will always confirm that I have received the booking.

At a minimum I need the names of the people going on the tour, date of the tour, start time, number of hours, name of the hotel I will meet you (or other meeting point) + any other information you think is relevant.

What happens when I have booked a Tour | Experience

On the day I pick you up at your hotel, the airport, the cruise terminal, or at another place we have agreed, at the agreed time. At the end I take you back to the hotel, or to the place you have asked for. That is the policy.

A lot of guides would rather drop you where it suits them. That is laziness dressed up as logistics, and it breaks the code. You have paid for a private day. You should not be dumped at a convenient MTR station because it shortens the guide’s journey home.

I was doing hotel, airport and cruise pick-up when I started private tours in 2010. Sending a visitor who does not know the city to a meeting point that suits the guide is normal on a coach or group tour. Virtually any group tour meets at an MTR station and drops you at an MTR station. That is not how a private day should start or finish.

The itinerary is not a laminated sheet. First-timers in particular are usually happy to leave it to me. I work it out once we have met, around the time you have and what you actually want to see, with someone who has lived here since January 2nd 1972.

J3 Hong Kong Tours and Experiences - What is your most popular tour?

Believe it or not an 8 hour tour is my most popular tour accounting for 29% of my bookings followed by a 6 hour at 23% of my bookings, I do NOT have set or standard tours (with one or two exceptions) all tours are custom designed and take into account anything you would like to do

Hong Kong Tours and Experiences - What is your most popular start time

I would say that 80% of my day tours start at the very agreeable time of 10am. so we are not really subject to morning rush hour issues and waiting for places to open

Please note that we can start at whatever time is convenient for you, 10am is simply a guideline!

J3 Hong Kong Tours and Experiences - Who will be the guide on my tour?

Me, Jamie and that is that, I do not employ other guides, if for any reason I am unable to do a tour with you I am more than happy to recommend my great friends who also do private tours, quite a few of them employ multiple great guides, we operate an informal group in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Private Guides Society, in operation for over 12 years and I am a founder member, we are all about quality.

J3 Hong Kong Tours and Experiences - Prices

Prices are not negotiable. This is a premium private tour, not a group product with a discount ladder. The full US$ list is on the Prices | Book Now page. The figure is the total for the group, not a per-person fee. Children 17 and under, accompanying adults, are free.

You get what you pay for in this city. That is not a slogan. It is the difference between a day with someone who lives here and a day with a script.

J3 Hong Kong Tours and Experiences - Payments, Deposits and Cancellations

I do not take a deposit. You pay on the day, in cash, in US$ or HK$. Other currencies, ask first. About 90% of guests pay in US$ cash.

Most Hong Kong tour companies want 50% up front and the balance before the day. Online agencies such as Viator, Tripadvisor and Get Your Guide take the lot 48 to 72 hours before the tour, on a card, and then take their time paying the guide. I can take a booking a year ahead with nothing paid until we meet. That is the point of booking direct.

The other side of no deposit is simple. If you do not turn up, I do not get paid, and I cannot sell that slot again. Over 16 years and more than 2,400 tours I have had over 375 cancellations, many with no notice. That is about HK$1.68 million, or US$215,000, of days that simply vanished. Sundays are the worst, because that is when the spare requests come in and I could have filled the day.

If plans change, tell me. Forty-eight hours gives me a decent chance to offer the day to someone else. Flight delays, illness and the usual mess of travel happen. I work with that. Silence does not.

Pick-up time and place go in the confirmation and they are set. I wait one hour. If I have heard nothing by then I treat it as a no-show and leave.

J3 Hong Kong Private Tours and Experiences - Transport + Food Costs

| IMPORTANT | Inclusions and Exclusions

What the fee includes, and what it does not

Included: ordinary public transport on the day - taxis at my discretion, buses, minibuses, ferries, street trams and the MTR. I pay my own fares.

Not included: the Peak Tram, the Airport Express, the Ngong Ping 360 cable car, Uber, private cars, meals, drinks, snacks and souvenirs. Those are yours.

Lantau Island is the one awkward extra. Only the blue taxis can run to the Big Buddha and The Tai O Fishing Village, and you pay those. A proper Lantau day is an 8-hour day. I have written about the logistics at length on many blog posts if you want the detail before you book.

I am upfront about this because too many companies and booking sites spring extras on the morning. Read their small print. You will not need a magnifying glass for mine.

Do you need HK$ Cash for your Hong Kong Tour | Experience?

The Hong Kong dollar has been pegged at US$1 = HK$7.80 since 17 October 1983.

Hong Kong is not cash-free, unlike the Mainland. Most taxi drivers still prefer HK$ notes. Only about 10% to 30% of taxis take cards, and that will not be universal by some neat date on a calendar. Market stalls are cash. Restaurants and convenience stores usually take both. Left luggage at the airport and Airport Express stations can insist on HK$ cash.

An Octopus card started as a travel card and now pays for a great deal else. For a few days here it is worth having. We can sort one when we meet.

How much cash you need is personal. As a starting figure, HK$400 to HK$500 per adult per day is sensible. I once had a guest pay HK$80,000, over US$10,000, in cash for a Rolex, so people vary.

ATMs are everywhere. Check with your own bank which Hong Kong machines will talk to yours. In 2025 and 2026 I have had guests whose cards were refused, for any of twenty reasons. If you are worried, ask me before you travel.

Is Hong Kong a safe place? is there a lot of street crime?

Yes. Hong Kong is a very safe city. Muggings and street robberies are rare. A foreign visitor is rarely robbed. When it does happen it is usually in the entertainment districts, and drink is usually involved. The people who do it tend not to be residents. The odd “local” case is often a money-changer clerk who got careless.

Pickpocketing is the scare story travel articles like. In 2025 the Hong Kong Police recorded 208 cases for the whole city, a drop of 56.3% on the year before. For 7.5 million residents and more than 50 million visitors that is tiny. The ten-year run has usually sat between 350 and 500. If gangs of pickpockets were working this city it would be front-page news and the government would not tolerate it. People here still hand in lost wallets and purses, intact.

Look after your phone and wallet on the MTR and in crowded markets, as you would in any busy city. That is ordinary sense, not a crisis. Hong Kong is not a third-world country. The city’s leader was a police officer for 33 years and is very big on law and order. There are about 33,000 officers, in uniform and in plain clothes. There are already tens of thousands of CCTV cameras, heading for 60,000+ by 2028. Street crime is usually cleaned up inside 24 hours. A mask or a hoodie does not help. Neither does a T-shirt with a huge logo on it, which rather assists the hunt.

The movie version - AK-47s, shootouts, gangs roaming Nathan Road - is nonsense. Private citizens cannot legally own guns or ammunition here. Fake guns are not tolerated either. Get caught and you can expect 14 years. We have had our moments historically. They ended badly, and permanently, for the people who tried it.

Are your Tours and Experiences listed on Viator or Tripadvisor to book?

No. I listed on Viator well over a decade ago and I will not do it again. The commission is at highway-robbery level, they take ages to pay you after the tour, and you have to fit their template. Every tour on those sites looks like every other tour. No control over who the guide is, which tells you how little they understand the job. The guide is the tour.

There are not that many first-rate private guides in Hong Kong. I know them. There are any number of average ones working from a memorised script in poor English. You have a better chance of the first sort by booking on the company’s own site.

I am not on Tours by Locals, Get Your Guide, City Unscripted, With Locals, Klook or the rest of them either. They send volume. I want control of the day, the booking and the payment.

Do you do car tours in Hong Kong ?

There seems to be a bit of walking involved?

Yes. I started out selling walking tours, and the day is still built on two feet and public transport. That is not a slogan. It is how you actually see Hong Kong.

For a lot of visitors the problem is not the distance. It is summer. Heat, humidity and sudden rain can turn a pleasant morning into a slog by early afternoon. June to September regularly sits at 30 to 34°C with humidity of 65 to 90%. You cannot pretend that away, and you cannot sit it out in a car and still claim you have seen the place.

This is where the job is. I have been getting around this city since 1972, and after 2,400+ tours I can read a group pretty quickly. If someone is flagging, if the sky is about to open, if a slope or a set of steps is going to be a problem, I change the plan. More MTR, more shade, more air-conditioning, a different sequence, a sit-down. The itinerary is not carved in stone.

Tell me in advance if you have mobility issues or a problem with steps. Some steps cannot be avoided. All public transport here is air-conditioned. Wear decent shoes. Water is in every convenience store.

The pace is leisurely. I am not trying to cram six neighbourhoods into three hours. There are rest stops. I adapt the day to the people in front of me, and to my own limits. The MTR is the backbone because it ignores road traffic. You also see how the city actually moves, which you will not do from the back seat of a car.

When is the best time to visit Hong Kong and Weather Issues and yes, it rains in Hong Kong

Weather Policy

Hong Kong has four distinct seasons. The most comfortable months temperature-wise are generally October to May, when humidity drops and conditions are pleasant for being outdoors. December, January and February can feel cool (sometimes downright cold), but they are often ideal for walking and sightseeing. In winter and spring, rainfall is usually light, with many sunny - though sometimes hazy - days.

Having lived here since January 1972, I can count on one hand the number of tours I have had to cancel purely because of weather. The weather is what it is - I cannot control it, but I am very good at adapting plans so you still have a memorable day.

Note that real-time queue visibility at major attractions remains limited, so I always plan with flexibility in mind. Tours will normally go ahead unless we face serious issues such as very heavy rain forecast to persist all day or a typhoon affecting Hong Kong. In practice, I follow common sense and the general guidelines from the Hong Kong Observatory. A tour will usually be cancelled at the start (or sometimes part-way through) if:

• It is raining very hard and likely to continue for more than 2 - 3 hours

• A typhoon is near Hong Kong and the weather is forecast to deteriorate significantly during the day

For the latest weather, always check the Hong Kong Observatory website or app.

If a tour is cancelled due to weather, you will not need to pay my guiding fee. Persistent heavy rain simply makes exploring outdoors miserable for most people, so I always give you the option to cancel or reschedule. (That said, I have been out in many short tropical showers - they can actually be fun when they last only 10 minutes!)

A note on summer (June to September): It is always hot and humid, with daytime temperatures typically 30 - 34°C (86 - 91°F) and humidity between 65 - 90%. Evenings are a little cooler. It is not as unbearable as some visitors fear, especially if we plan around shaded or air-conditioned spots, but it is something to keep in mind when packing and pacing the day.

So we are clear

Common sense will prevail - if the experience is cancelled you do not need to pay me

What about Foodie Experiences | Tours?- Do your Private Tours include lunch or meals?

I love food. I have eaten in approaching 1,400 restaurants in more than 50 years here. That is a fact, and it comes up on tours when we talk about where to eat. It does not make me a food-tour guide.

I do not run foodie experiences. I will happily stop for a meal, or an egg tart, and I know good places at most budgets. I am not the person who will give you the history of every dish, walk a wet market naming ingredients, or take you through six restaurants in an afternoon. And I will certainly not deconstruct the experience of eating a bowl of wonton noodles.

If you want a dedicated food tour, there are companies here who do that well. I know them. I will send you to them.

Do the tours include lunch?

No sit-down lunch is built into the day. A proper meal can take 45 to 90 minutes, longer if the place is busy, and that is time off the streets. A 7-Eleven stop or a quick bite is usually enough.

If you want a proper meal, say so on the booking form or email. I will tell you what it does to the clock. When we do sit down, it is your choice and your bill. I cover a small snack or drink if we make a quick stop.

I do not steer you into restaurants for a kickback. Group tours do that. I do not.

How about visiting Disneyland or Ocean Park?

Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park are great for adults and kids alike. If you wish to visit such attractions as Disneyland or Ocean Park then you need to allow 6 - 8 hours as an absolute minimum. They are very easy to get to but in order to get the best out of the visit, you need to allocate time as many of the popular attractions have big queues. Visiting any outlying Islands will also require a good part of the day.

I would also point out that hiring me to take you to Disneyland or Ocean Park is just not necessary, you can easily do these on your own, they are both pretty easy to get to.  

Do you offer other Offbeat Experiences or Group Tours?

What happens if you are already booked?

I may still be available even on days where I have an existing experience | tour depending on your timing and the number of hours for the experience, if needs be please contact me for confirmation.

I am always happy to work on Sunday's and public holiday's including Christmas Day and New Year's day.... I would say that Sunday is absolutely the most popular day to do an experience in Hong Kong, so much to see and do!

Yes, I am a very busy chap so prompt booking is always advisable as I work on a first come, first served basis and I work 7 days a week!  I do love a good night experience as well... however there are times when I simply will not be able to fit you in, sorry!

I have no issues at all about giving you a recommendation for other excellent private guides in Hong Kong, we are all great friends, I will provide contact details and recommendations, it becomes my mission in life to set you up with the best tour companies in Hong Kong

Do you cater for older people and Seniors?

Do you cater for kids and are your experiences kid friendly?

What languages do you speak?

Photographs and Photography?

Is it ok to tip me at the conclusion of the experience | tour?

Tipping is always optional and boy, what an awkward subject to broach! if you have had a great time and want to thank me in this manner, then gratuities are very much appreciated!

...however, let me be clear,  I will never ask, I will never be offended if you do not offer a tip and I am not going to claim that 50% of the tip will go to charity! (and for the record I have been giving to charities all my adult life in Hong Kong!)

Lastly

Hong Kong is a major international city with an excellent reputation and is very tourist friendly. It is a very safe place so carrying expensive camera equipment and wearing a Rolex watch will not increase your chances of getting robbed.

However you need to look after your wallet and mobile phones on the MTR (subway system) and in crowded markets like you would in any bustling metropolis.

I am a keen amateur photographer and I will sometimes take pictures, I keep this to a minimum. I am also more than happy to take pictures of you!

Hong Kong is fast paced and a bit in your face, but it is also very civilised; remember we can get (pre - covid) between 55 - 65 million visitors a year (but only 3.5 million in 2020) so we know how to look after our guests. Take it from me, you will absolutely enjoy your time in Hong Kong!

Me and my personality.... 

I arrived in Hong Kong as a child on January 2nd 1972 and have been here ever since and I love it here, I am married with 3 boys who where all born and raised in Hong Kong.... my wife is a local, born and bred in Hong Kong! and Cantonese is her first language.

I have a somewhat evolved (and understated) dry English sense of humour! and you should take this into account when I regale stories about living here.

I am full of completely useless facts about Hong Kong...(and I know plenty of historical facts as well!)

I tend to say it as it is, Hong Kong is NOT perfect by any means and naturally I will answer any question you throw at me, I DO NOT offer up sanitized answers or opinions, I do not sugar coat things and can be quite blunt on certain issues so please take this into account

OK not quite the last bit!

You agree to notify me by email in advance of any pre existing health / medical condition including food allergies and such which may well be an issue with regards to you participating in one of my private experiences.

If you have a pre-existing medical condition then Personal Accident Insurance is strongly advised.

Please bear in mind that my private experiences are walking experiences incorporating public transport as needed. although not particularly strenuous, you should bear in mind that some parts of Hong Kong are hilly and the weather can be very hot and humid particularly the Summer. In this regard, you should consider your ability to engage in medium aerobic urban style walking. If you are unsure about this, please consult your Doctor

All experiences are undertaken at the participants own risk. J3 Consultants / Jamie Lloyd accept no liability or obligation in the event of illness, injury, death or loss or damage to personal property.

It is recommended that you arrange your own Travel Insurance that covers - inter alia, accidents, personal injury, property loss and emergency medical services.

Hong Kong follows the British style traffic flow and crossing rules. To avoid accidents, please be vigilant and remember to follow all road crossing signals and traffic warnings, our Police Officers and Traffic Wardens take great delight in giving a jaywalking ticket to foreigners

Photographs and short film clips may be taken during the day. They may appear on the website and in promotional material for these tours. Faces are not named. Images are not sold. If you would rather not appear, say so at the start of the day and those frames will not be used

Disclaimer

All information provided on the J3 Consultants website is correct to the best of my knowledge, errors, omissions and exceptions not withstanding.

J3 Consultants / Jamie Lloyd do not assume responsibility or any liability for any tour participant’s own misunderstanding or misinterpretation of any information provided on this site. 

Parents accept full responsibility for the behaviour / actions of their children whilst on an experience.

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J3 Consultants Hong Kong, J3 Private Experiences Hong Kong, Private Experiences Hong Kong, Private Tours Hong Kong, Walking Tours Hong, Hong Kong Tours, Tours in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Pearl of the Orient