Many of them still include a jewellery shop visit - unreal!

**Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong since January 2nd 1972 - I know the place.**

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Hong Kong Coach Tours - Read the Itinerary small print

Many of them still include a jewellery shop visit - unreal!

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Winston Coach Tours | Hong Kong 1970’s | Hong Kong

Coach Tours in Hong Kong have not evolved much in the past 50 years.

Coach tours of Hong Kong have been around for 60 years and for decades they where the only real option to explore Hong Kong.

When we arrived as a family on January 2nd 1972 we were informed by the Merlin Hotel that my Dad’s emplyer the Hong Kong Telephone Company had arranged for a couple of coach tours for the 3rd and 4th of January, we were very excited about that,

Now I cannot be 100% sure but I am pretty sure it was Winston Tours who had been booked as they where just around the corner so to speak, I still remember quite a bit of the tours, it was so exciting and it was the perfect introduction to Hong Kong

... and the key point, no visit to a jewellery store or souvenir store, that much I do remember.

My father had also asked at the Hotel front desk about an option to book a Private Tour and they recommened that no, not a good idea as public transport was “very local” (ie buses with no aircons” and there was no subway system so a coach tour was the only sensible option

Fast forward to 2025 and coach tours are still a popular way to see Hong Kong, I have written quite a few blog posts about them and I have been on 4 of them over the past decade in the interests of research.

Back in 2010 when I first started promoting Private Tours (basically no one was doing them) I went on a coach tour as for Western Tourists this was the preferred option.

Honestly I can see the attraction of them, air conditioned coaches for 20 or 50 passengers, a tour guide and on paper an interesting itinerary and yes, an attractive per person price and hotel pick up and drop off. What’s not to like!

Before going on the first coach tour I cast my mind back to 1972 and that was to be my benchmark - I was also worried that it would turn out to be an awesome tour as these where the main competition to Private Tours.

I choose the Hong Kong Island Tour and from the time I got on the coach I knew that my fears were unfounded.

The guide was a youngish lady and her English was not great (which suprised me) and for all the time we were on the coach she used the PA system tbat was far too loud to basically recite a memorised script as to what we were sseeing, she also regaled us with jokes and humourus anecdotes which fell flat.

At Victoria Peak we were left to our own devices and had 30 minutes to explore on our own, then the upselling of souvenirs started... the rest of the tour was no better and it was not possible to engage the guide in any meaningful conversation and she had trouble answering even simple questions that had not been covered in the canned commentary.

The icing on the cake was we were taken to a jewellery showroon (and I really do not recall that it was listed on the itinerary) | factory and we where led to a showroom with lots of display cases and a team of people to harass and cajole us into buying cheap jewellery, they brought new meaning to the term “hard sell”

Whatever goodwill had been generated on what we had seen and heard about (not to mention comfy seats and aircons on the coach) instantly evaporated and we had to endure 45 minutes of it. The tour guide had vanished and to be fair she seemed a bit embarrassed by this detour but that is hardly the point

This is a textbook example of a legacy operator that’s been coasting on old habits for decades. The jewellery factory stop has been baked into nearly every one of their full-day and half-day itineraries since the 1970s. Back then it was practically industry standard: the tour company got a fat commission (often 30–50 % of sales), the guide got a kickback, the driver got a bonus, and the jewellery factory paid the concierge a referral fee. Everyone in the chain made money except the guest, who got herded through a high-pressure sales room and then dumped back at the hotel feeling scammed.

In 2025 that model feels not just outdated but borderline insulting, especially when:

• Independent travellers now read TripAdvisor, Google Reviews and Reddit before breakfast

• Most 5-star hotel guests are willing to pay double or more for a private guide who doesn’t waste their time

• Hong Kong’s own Travel Industry Authority has been cracking down on coercive shopping since the 2010s

Yet there are many companies that still do it because:

• They own a huge fleet with the high costs associated with running a fleet of tour buses

• They have contracts with dozens of hotels that guarantee them desk space in the lobby and concierge referrals in exchange for commissions.

• A big chunk of their clientele is still mainland Chinese package groups or first-time visitors who are not familiar with alternatives

• if visitors have Travel Agencies book their Hong Kong visit, then they will pretty miuch automatically book tours with coach tour companies here

So that is the basics, now I am going to get into specifics

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GL Tours Lantau Tour | Home Page Itinerary | Hong Kong

I must stress that I have no personal animosity towards GL Tours (Formely Gray Line Tours), they have been offering tours in Hong Kong by coach since 1959 apparently, that is an awful long time and you have to admire this and Gray Line Tours has always been a trusted name in coach tours historically around the world.

When you this itinerary, well it is first rate

On the other hand a very simple business rule comes into play and that is “things change”

Doing tours in the 1970's bears no real resemblance to doing tours in 2025 and you have to adapt to changing circumstances and yet some companies stick to the old ways, competition in Hong Kong is fierce (for example now there are over 200 companies offering Private Tours, up from basically one in 2010) and it is the same for the coach tour business model.

There is now so much negative publicity around taking tour guests to Jewellery stores that I wonder why they still do it, well Management is unwilling to changes presumably as some people do make jewellery purchases which makes it viable but they forget that negative Tripadvisor reviews (and word of mouth) can have a catastrophic effect on business.

I simply cannot understand why GL Tours persists in doing the Jewellery store stop in 2025, their client base is primarity Western Tourists and they have a lot more competition now, the difference is, they do not try and force you to buy Jewellery.

If they removed this option from their tours, they would do a lot more business, as I have said the coach tour itself is perfectly acceptable to a lot of tourists, it is a reasonable price and ticks a lot of boxes.

What has really hit a nerve with me is how GL Tours are promoting their popular Lantau Island Tour which in the past 2 years has become probably the most popular tour in Hong Kong.

Lantau Island is Hong Kong’s largest Island and is a one hour trip away from downtown to get to Tung Chung a stopping off point to get transport to the Big Buddha and the Tai O Fishing Village on Lantau

Below is how GL Tours promotes the Lantau Tour

Image 1 above is from the home page which details the Lantau Tour itinerary in great detail

Image 2 below is from the actual booking page, again the itinerary is shown but they have slipped in right at the end an additional stop to visit a jewellery store!

I mean seriously this is not right, most people have seen the itinerary on the home page and used that as a booking reference and will simply have no idea that there is an extra unwanted stop at the end of the tour

As mentioned above the itinerary itself is first rate, it is pretty much what everyone else does and generally people will take into account the quality of the guide (which is in my book is the key component of a tour) and GL guides like most coach and group tour guides work from a very simple script, basic facts and such.

For the life of me and after giving guests a nice day out and seeing some terrific places would they take a detour on the way back to town to a jewellery store? It is not logical when you take into account that it comes as an unwanted detour and virtually all the guests have not read the tour small print properly

The jewellery store stop is universally hated by tourists and is responsible for a lot of their very negative reviews and I am betting they never ask people for a review because all they remember is the unwanted jewellery store stop and the high pressure sales tactics.

Seriously I have to laugh at this screenshot of a 2025 review and how management implies that the stop is part of Hong Kong Government efforts to revive the old mantra that Hong Kong is a shoppers paradise! people are not dumb, they know all about the hated jewellery store stops

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GL Tours Lantau Tour | Booking Page Itinerary | Hong Kong

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GL Tours Lantau Tour | Tripadvisor Review 2025 | Hong Kong

Seriously I have to laugh at this screenshot of a 2025 review and how management implies that the stop is part of Hong Kong Government efforts to revive the old mantra that Hong Kong is a shoppers paradise! They do not even say jewellery store as they know what people think of that

This is utter nonsense, no tour company that values its reputation in this day and age would take Western Tourists to a high pressure jewellery salesroom (and calling it a souvenir shop does not fool people) and yes the Hong Kong Government has actually been cracking down on this for over 10 years.

Clearly the fact that they have 2 itineraries on their website for the Lantau Tour suggests that they know how tourists feel about a jewellery stop.

It is a simple problem to fix, I know their prices and I know the tour industry in Hong Kong, they should increase their prices and hire better tour guides

Offering a private coach for the Lantau Tour is quite a selling point, better guides means a better quality tour, why rish everything by adding in this universally hated tour option.

It is vital that your read every single line of the itinerary particularly the one listed on the booking page so there are no nasty surprises