Ashley M Private Tours Hong Kong 2027 - When You Book Ashley You Get Ashley
Women Run Companies, Charismatic Founders, No Guide Team Behind the Name
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Ashley M Private Tours Hong Kong 2027 - When You Book Ashley You Get Ashley
Foreword by Jamie
Women Run Companies, Charismatic Founders, No Guide Team Behind the Name
I first sat down with Ashley in January 2018. She had written to me because Tripadvisor was being Tripadvisor, and she wanted a straight answer from someone who had already been through the same mill. We sorted the problem. Then we talked about Hong Kong in a book shop in Star House. That is how a lot of the better friendships in this trade start. Not at a networking breakfast. Over a practical nuisance, and then over the city itself.
Eight years on she is still the same person I met that afternoon. Driven, yes. Very successful, yes. Quiet with it. She does not bounce around a room collecting business cards. She just gets on with the job, and guests and other guides both seem to fall into step with her. I have met her many times since 2018. In January 2025 she and our mutual friend Amy of Hong Kong Greeters took me for a birthday lunch at the Peak Lookout Restaurant at Victoria Peak. That is the Ashley I know. Kind, organised, and present. This post replaces the earlier piece I wrote about her company. That version has not dated well. The reviews have moved on, the prices have moved on, and two points I should have made more clearly then are the points I want to make now. Ashley stayed a single guide. There is no Guide Team behind a brand name. When you book Ashley, you get Ashley. And Ashley M Private Tours is yet another example of a tour company in this city run by a woman.
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Ashley M Private Tours Hong Kong 2027 - When You Book Ashley You Get Ashley
Who Ashley Is, and Why That Matters
Ashley in a nutshell is one my favourite people.
Ashley is a born and bred Hong Konger. She has been operating as a private tour guide here since 2016 . Tripadvisor shows the listing joining in June 2016. On ToursByLocals her profile dates from 13th August 2018. The trading name you will still see on the small print is Running Panda Hong Kong. That is the legal wrapper. The name that makes sense to a guest is Ashley M Private Tours, and that is the name I have used since I first wrote about her. It is her. It is not a shop front with a rota of faces behind it.
She came into this work from food and culture journalism. That is not a line on a brochure. You can hear it on a tour and you can see it afterwards. Guests talk about the written recap she sends when the tour is over. Dates, dishes, shops, temples, the little asides she gave them on the MTR. A journalist's habit (and I should point out that I have been doing that since 2011!). Most guides say goodbye at the hotel door and that is that. Ashley leaves people with a record of the tour they actually took. In a city where the average visitor will not remember the name of the third temple, that is worth more than another selfie in front of a harbour railing.
Her father is a chef of real standing. Food is not a module she bolted onto a sightseeing script. It sits in the family. That is why her culinary tours have the unfussy confidence they do. She is not performing being a foodie. She is taking you to eat, and then telling you why the stall, the tea house or the dried seafood shop is the one she chose.
The Languages Ashley Speaks, Which Are the Real Point
Ashley works in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. She will also slip into a pinch of regional dialect when the stallholder in front of you is not speaking textbook Cantonese. That last bit is easy to skip past. It should not be skipped. A lot of Hong Kong guiding is sold as bilingual and then turns out to be serviceable English plus Cantonese at the ticket window. Ashley's English is not serviceable. Guests keep using the same words. Perfect. A++. Great spoken and written English. One couple who had already toured Japan and Korea wrote that she was the most knowledgeable guide of the lot, and they put English fluency first on the list.
Why does that matter so much going into 2027? Because Hong Kong is not a monolingual city and the guest list is not a monolingual guest list. You get American and British and Australian first timers who need the history in clear English. You get visitors from Mainland China who want Mandarin without the tour collapsing into a lecture. You get overseas Chinese families who can follow both, and who notice immediately when a guide is faking one of the two. Ashley can take a mixed table and keep everyone in the conversation. That is a rare skill. It is also why other guides speak well of her. She does not make the rest of us look clumsy. She makes the guest feel looked after in the language they actually think in.
I have lived here since 2nd January 1972 and I still cannot get Cantonese to sit in my head and that is not through lack of trying. I say that without embarrassment. It is a fact. Watching Ashley move between a dried seafood uncle in Cantonese, a guest from California in English, and a question from a Mandarin speaker about the same slab of fish, is watching someone who grew up inside the city rather than someone who learned the city for work. The languages are not an add on. They are how she does the job.
What Guests Keep Saying About Ashley
As of mid September 2026 the Tripadvisor listing for Ashley M Hong Kong Private Tour sits at 5.0 from about 265 reviews. Rankings bounce around from week to week, but the listing has been living at or near the top of Outdoor Activities in Hong Kong for a long time. On ToursByLocals she is also at 5.0. I am not going to pretend that review sites are holy writ. I am going to say that a run of five star reviews that long, with almost no drift, is not luck. It is a working method.
A few things come up again and again.
She writes to guests before the tour and asks what they actually want. History, food, shopping, landscape, family pace. Then she builds the tour around that list rather than walking them through a laminated loop.
She uses the city the way residents use it. The Street tram, MTR (Subway) , Star Ferry, a private car when the itinerary needs one. Not a sealed bubble from attraction to attraction.
Seniors, teenagers, cruise passengers on a tight clock, and families who book her for 2 or 3 tours in a row all seem to get the same calm attention.
She will change the plan on the day if something better appears, or if someone is tiring. Several reviews mention the pivot without fuss.
Overseas Chinese guests in particular recommend her. That is a demanding audience. They already know the language and they know when a story is thin.
She follows up. The written recap, the restaurant tip for tomorrow, the warning about a booking that would have put someone on the wrong side of an immigration line. That last one is not a small thing.
One German guest on a New Territories bike tour called her the best tour guide he had ever had, and then listed history, urban development, religion, culture and politics as the ground she covered while they were pedalling. That is the range. She is not only a food guide who can also point at a building.
When You Book Ashley, You Get Ashley
This is the part of the story I think other operators should sit with. Ashley has been successful, and a large part of that success is the choice she made to stay a single guide. No Guide Team. No junior on Tuesday and the founder on the brochure. The person in the photographs is the person at the meeting point.
That choice has a cost. She cannot take every booking. The busiest time from the end of September through May will fill. Last minute requests are accepted when she is free, which is honest, but it is not the same as a company that can always find another guide. The gain is obvious to anyone who has been on the receiving end of a bait and switch. You researched the founder. You liked the reviews. You paid founder prices. And then a different person arrived with a different set of stories. Ashley simply does not do that. The charisma in this company is hers. It is a quiet charisma. She gels. That is the word I keep coming back to. Clients who have never met her write that she felt like an old friend about five minutes after the handshake. Other guides love her. That combination is less common than the industry pretends.
Every great private tour company in Hong Kong has a charismatic founder. Look at the list I keep coming back to and a pattern is sitting there in plain sight. These are women-run companies. Not a committee. Not a brand with a hired face on the homepage. Founders who built the thing, still answer the messages, and still set the standard. I have said it on the Hello Hong Kong post and I will say it here. Women run companies, charismatic founders, and in Ashley's case a founder who never handed the tour to somebody else.
Yet Another Tour Company Run by a Woman
I am not writing this as a slogan for the sake of a slogan. I am writing it because anyone who has spent 16 years watching this trade from the inside can see it. A striking share of the private tour companies I actually recommend, the ones with the reviews and the repeat guests and the quiet professionalism, are owned and run by women. Ashley is part of that group. She is not the exception. She is another data point. The list below is in no particular order. It is simply the women whose companies I send people to.
Amy at Hong Kong Greeters
Laura at Hello Hong Kong Tours
Cecilia at Hong Kong Foodie Tours
Alexandra and Stephanie at Hong Kong A La Carte
Apple at Hong Kong Getaway Private Tours
Lorena at Vive Hong Kong Tours
Ashley Yue at Hong Kong Food Crawlers
Sabrina at Hong Kong Trails and Tours
Virginia at Humid with a Chance of Fishballs
Ashley at Ashley M Private Tours
That is a lot of companies for one city, and it is not an accident. Private tours in Hong Kong reward listening, patience, and the ability to read a mixed table before the second street corner. They reward the person who will write the recap at midnight and still be smiling at 9am. They punish the operator who treats guests as units to be processed. The women on that list did not sit down and form a club. They just built companies that behave like that. Guests notice. Other guides notice. I notice.
Ashley fits the pattern and then she breaks one part of it. Some of those companies grew a Guide Team because the diary demanded it. Ashley did not. She kept the company and the guide as the same person. So you get the women-run company point and the solo-founder point in one booking. That is unusual even in a city that already has more women running serious tour businesses than most visitors expect.
What Ashley Actually Offers
The website is myhongkongtourguide.com and it is refreshingly direct. She publishes prices. I have said for years that a tour company which hides the price behind a contact form is asking to lose the enquiry. Ashley puts the numbers on the page. Prices below are the guide fee only, total for the tour, and they are listed in both US$ and HK$ as they appear on her site as of September 2026. Children aged 12 years and under are free. Maximum 6 guests on a walking tour. Maximum 4 guests when a private car is added.
Published starting points and formats
Authentic Hong Kong. Bespoke walking tours, often run as a full 8 hour outing, from US$500 / about HK$3,900 depending on group size and hours.
Eat Bike Love. New Territories by bike. Landscape, villages, food and the version of Hong Kong that sits outside the harbour postcard. About 6 hours, from US$450 / about HK$3,500.
Tram and Treats. Culinary Hong Kong with the double decker tram in the mix. About 4.5 hours, from US$380 / about HK$3,000.
Private car add on. US$50 / about HK$390 per hour for Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. US$60 / about HK$470 per hour for Lantau Island.
Fully bespoke hours. Her rate card runs from 4 hours to 8 hours and scales by the number of adults.
The 4 hour rate for 1 to 2 adults is US$350 / HK$2,750. The 8 hour rate for 1 to 2 adults is US$550 / HK$4,300. Six adults at 8 hours is US$730 / HK$5,750. Those are honest private tour prices for a single experienced guide in this city. She will also take a layover or a cruise tour and wring the hours dry, which several South African and American guests have written about at length.
Ask her about the Hong Kong Palace Museum if that is your sort of morning. Ask her for the Tai O Fishing Village and the Big Buddha if you want Lantau done properly rather than as a tick list. Ask her for a wet market and a plate of something you will not find on a hotel buffet. She will tell you if the request is a poor use of the hours. That is part of the job.
Book Ashley Direct If You Can
Like every great tour company I know in Hong Kong, Ashley would much rather you booked through her own website than through an OTA such as Viator or Get Your Guide. I will keep saying this until the platforms change their economics, which they will not. An OTA takes a slice, often a thick one. It also sits between the guest and the guide. Messages go missing. Dates get tangled. The person who answers the chat box is not always the person who will meet you at 9am. Ashley answers her own WhatsApp. She builds the itinerary herself. A direct booking pays her for the work you want her to do, and it means the conversation starts with the woman who will actually walk you through the city.
Use the platforms if that is the only way your travel agent will issue a voucher. Then write to Ashley anyway and introduce yourselves. Better still, skip the middle man. The site is simple. The contact details are on this page. She accepts last minute bookings when she is free, which is useful if you are already in Hong Kong and the original plan has fallen over.
Full Contact Details for Ashley
Ashley M Private Tours | Running Panda Hong Kong
Website: www.myhongkongtourguide.com
Booking page: www.myhongkongtourguide.com/booking
Email: runningpanda.hk@gmail.com
WhatsApp, SMS and iMessage: +852 5443 7808
Write to her with dates, how many adults and children, what you care about, and how many hours you have. She will come back with a plan. That is the whole system.
The Last Word
Hong Kong is full of people who can walk you past the same six attractions. It is much thinner on the ground when you want someone who can talk about the Palace Museum and a cage home in the same afternoon, in the language each guest prefers, without turning either stop into a performance. Ashley does that work with a quiet face and a long memory. She is driven. She is so, so kind. She has kept the company small on purpose. She also sits in a group I keep pointing to on this site. Amy, Laura, Cecilia, Alexandra and Stephanie, Apple,, Lorena, Ashley Yue, Sabrina, Virginia, and Ashley herself. Women-run tour companies, charismatic founders, and in her case the founder still doing every tour. If that is the sort of tour you came to Hong Kong to take, book her, book her direct, and do it before the diary fills.
Way to go, Ash.
So there you go
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Go here for the Hong Kong Michelin Restaurant Guide which includes the Bib Gourmand Category
I do not do Food Tours in Hong Kong but I know people that do!
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The information above can be shown to restaurant managers in Hong Kong if you are intolerant to gluten and nuts,
I do not do food tours as mentioned above, I have very specific reasons and part of it is that I do not speak Cantonese or write Chinese, I am from Yorkshire in England and I lack the language gene and it is not through lack of trying and yes a lot of restaurants do not have English menu’s or staff who speak conversational English.
.. and yet I have eaten at close to 1,400 restaurants in Hong Kong since January 2nd 1972, my wife was born in Hong Kong and we have been together over 40 years and her first language is Cantonese and a lot of her family are Chinese or half Chinese so I have never had much of an issue!
This does not translate to doing food tours though, yes, I could do them, no problem there but they would never ever be as good as the food tours done by my friends (see the 3 links above) most of their awesome guides are locally born Hong Kong Chinese and obviously food culture is part of their DNA, it is impossible for me to compete with that!
So please feel free to contact them for food tours
I do not do Hiking Tours in Hong Kong but I know someone that does!
I do not do Hiking Tours, never have and never will even though I used to go Hiking a lot when I was a lot younger, The Hong Kong Government is promoting hiking tours so I urge you to contact my friend Sabrina at Hong Kong Trails and Tours, she is a long time Hong Kong resident and and a very experienced hiker with close to 700 Hikes in 15+ years under her belt, please click on the link below
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