Hong Kong Free Tours and Michael Tsang - 10 Years of Local Storytelling
Caged Homes, Street Food, Lantau, and Why This Company Still Matters for 2027
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Inside Hong Kong Free Tours, the Owner, the Guides, and How to Book
Foreword by Jamie
Hong Kong Free Tours and Michael Tsang - 10 Years of Local Storytelling
I first exchanged messages with Michael in January 2017. That is a long time in this business and which I have bee in since 2010. I have watched Hong Kong Free Tours grow from a small idea into one of the most reviewed walking tour operations in Hong Kong, and I have watched Michael stay exactly the same sort of person he was when we first met: friendly, serious about the work, and not the least bit interested in herding people past a list of attractions so they can tick boxes and go home.
I should say this plainly at the start, because I have said it before and it still matters. I am not a free tour fan. I have never been. My own work is private, custom, and paid on the day. When free walking tours first appeared in Hong Kong I was openly and publicly sceptical, because a tour that lives on tips is not free in any honest sense of the word. Guests still pay. The difference is when they pay and how much they choose to leave. I have not changed my mind about that. What I have changed my mind about is Michael. He found a slice of the market that most of us doing private tours were not serving, he went after it with both hands, and he built something that works. That deserves a proper write up, not a polite nod.
This is that write up.
Why this company still deserves a spotlight
Hong Kong has no shortage of people willing to walk you through Central and tell you that the Bank of China building looks like a knife. What it has always been short of is operators who will talk about housing, money, politics, food as daily life rather than as a tasting menu, and the gap between the postcard harbour and the small rooms that thousands of people actually sleep in.
Michael spotted that gap early. He did not try to become another Victoria Peak and shopping day. He built a company that speaks to visitors who will not book a private car and a guide for a full day, and to visitors who will, but who first want a cheaper, younger, more street level way into the city. Those are not the same guests I usually take out. That is the point. There is more than enough city to go around.
On Tripadvisor as of early September 2026 the company sits at 4.9 out of 5 from well over 2,300 reviews and has been listed as number 1 among hundreds of tours and activities in Hong Kong. Facebook still carries the line that they have served over 40,000 visitors from around the world since 2016. Those are not vanity numbers. In this town, staying that high for that long means the guides are doing the work on the pavement, not just collecting five star copy and yes, a useful contrast, I have served just about 7,000 guests since my first tour in 2011, it shows the difference in the types of tours we specialise in.
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Inside Hong Kong Free Tours, the Owner, the Guides, and How to Book
Michael, the founder who actually walks
Michael Tsang is a Hong Konger. That sounds obvious until you remember how many people selling this city learned it from a script. He grew up here, took economics and statistics at Berkeley, then spent years in finance in the United States and later as an actuary in the Netherlands. Twelve years in that world was enough. He has said, more than once, that he could not see himself doing another 30. In 2016 he walked away from a salary that most tour guides will never see, cut his income by something like 70% to 80% in those early years, and started taking people around his own city.
That background matters. He is not a romantic who fell into tourism. He is a numbers man who decided the work that counted was standing in the street and explaining Hong Kong to strangers. He had taken free walking tours himself while living in Europe and came home to find almost nobody here was offering the same thing in English, from a local point of view, without a coach and a flag.
I have only met him a handful of times over the years and a couple of times in 2026. Each time the same impression: young, very polite, and far more serious about the craft than the cheerful marketing suggests. He answers his own reviews. He still leads tours. Guests in 2026 are still writing that Michael himself took them to Lantau, or paced a food walk so an older parent did not get left behind. Founders who disappear into an office after year three are common. Founders who still show up at Central or Admiralty in a yellow shirt are not.
Charisma in this trade is not a stage act. It is the ability to hold a mixed group on a pavement in Sham Shui Po and talk about cage homes without turning the morning into a lecture or a sob story. Michael and his guides can do that, and he has hired people the right people to be his guides.
How the free tour model actually works in Hong Kong
Let us not pretend. The signature walking tours were built on a pay what you can, tip at the end model. You book, you meet the guide, you walk, and at the finish you decide what the morning was worth. That is the European free tour formula transplanted to Hong Kong.
It is not charity. The guides need to eat. Michael has been honest about that from the beginning. What the model does is remove the booking barrier for students, backpackers, and anyone who hears the words private tour and immediately thinks of a price they cannot justify. For a certain kind of visitor that barrier is the whole game. Remove it and they will come. Keep it and they will walk past the tourist office and go to a mall.
The company is no longer only that. They now run paid street food walks, paid Lantau days, paid private tours, and themed walks that sit on Tripadvisor and GetYourGuide with a fixed price. One recent food walk review put the ticket around HK$168 (about US$22). The Dark Side of Hong Kong walk has been listed in the region of HK$250 (about US$32). Those figures move, as all tour prices do, so treat them as a snapshot not a tariff. The core idea has not moved: get people walking with a local before they decide Hong Kong is only a skyline and a shopping list.
The rise of free walking tours, and why the word free is not the whole story
If you have been through London, Dublin, Edinburgh, New York, Sydney, Melbourne or almost any city that lives on English speaking visitors, you will have seen the same thing. A young guide in a coloured T shirt, a cluster of people outside a station, a 2 hour loop through streets the coach cannot enter, and a hat or a speech at the end. The format did not start in Hong Kong. It grew up in Europe in the 2000s, rode the review sites in the 2010s, and by the time Michael came home from the Netherlands it was already the default first morning for a certain kind of traveller.
The obvious explanation is the word free. I do not buy that as the main reason, and I never have. People are not fools. They know a tip is expected. They know a good guide will go home with cash in the pocket. If cheapness were the only point, the same guests would download a self guided map and keep the money. Plenty of them still do that. The ones who join a walk are buying something else.
What they are buying, as far as I can see, is a low risk first conversation with a city. A private tour asks you to decide, before you have set foot on the pavement, that this person and this price are worth a full day. That is a big ask when you landed last night, you do not yet know if you like the place, and the hotel has already taken a painful bite out of the budget. A 2 hour walk asks for 2 hours and a judgement at the end. That is a different psychological door. It feels like trying the city on, not signing up for it.
There is also a quiet revolt against the old coach tour product (I have had plenty to say about that over the past 16 years). English speaking travellers under 50, and a fair number over 50, have had enough of being counted onto a bus, given a headset, and shown the building from the opposite pavement. They want to walk. They want to stop. They want to ask a question that is not on the card. The free walking tour, at its best, feels closer to being taken around by a sharp local friend than to being processed by a company. The tip at the end makes that feeling stronger, not weaker. You are paying a person you have just spent a morning with. You are not feeding a counter.
Review culture did the rest. Once Tripadvisor and later Google made it easy to see that 2,000+ strangers thought the yellow shirt was worth it, the format stopped looking like a dodge and started looking like the sensible first booking. Add short city breaks, expensive rooms, and a generation that would rather spend money on a meal they chose than on a ticket they did not, and you have a product that keeps spreading. Hong Kong was late to it. Michael was early for Hong Kong. That timing, plus the fact he had already walked those European free tours as a guest, is a large part of why he landed the niche instead of watching someone else land it.
Those yellow shirts and the guides
Michael made one small branding decision that I still smile about. He ditched the flag. In its place the guides wear bright yellow shirts or jackets with the company name on the back. You can spot them at an MTR exit from the other end of the concourse. In a city that already has too many umbrellas on sticks, that is a smart move.
The guide team is the other half of why this works. Michael has always preferred fairly young, English speaking Hong Kongers who can talk to the people who actually book a free or low cost walk. That guest is often under 40, often travelling light, often more interested in housing and food stalls than in colonial architecture. A local guide who grew up here will land that conversation faster than someone who learned the city from a folder.
He does not hire foreign guides. The team you meet in the yellow shirt is local, and that is a choice he has stuck to from the start. Reviews name the team as much as they name Michael. Alice, Wingman, Wind, Stephen, Steven, Carmen, Johnson when he was still training. The pattern in the comments is the same: they wait if you are late out of the ticket gate, they do not rush the older walker, they answer the awkward question without a pamphlet, and they know where the toilets are. That last point is not a joke. After 16 years of watching groups on these streets I can tell you that a guide who plans shade, seats, water and a WC is a professional. A guide who only plans a viewpoint is an amateur.
The types of tours they actually specialise in
If you only remember one thing, remember this. Hong Kong Free Tours is not a greatest hits company. The catalogue has a shape and context.
Introduction to Hong Kong
This is the on ramp. Central, the Court of Final Appeal, One Country Two Systems and the 2047 question, the fact that commercial banks print the banknotes here rather than a central bank, the HSBC lions, land reclamation, St John’s Cathedral, and a personal family story from the guide. Food recommendations appear along the Mid Levels escalator, which is the right way to do it. You walk, you talk, you eat later if you want. Duration is usually around 2 hours. Meeting point is typically in the Admiralty or Central MTR area.
Dark Side of Hong Kong, the caged homes and subdivided flats walk
This is the tour that made the company’s name, and it is still the one I respect most. Sham Shui Po, Pei Ho Street, Mong Kok and Prince Edward, Lui Seng Chun for herbal tea, talk of the poverty line, rooftop houses, and a visit inside a tiny unit. Michael’s team have, for years, rented a subdivided flat specifically so guests can stand in it. They do not show you a photograph and move on. You go in., I am myself familiar with subdivided housing, my mother in law and brother in law live in basically a 150sqft unit in Kowloon
I have written about this before and I will write it again. That decision is the difference between talking about the real Hong Kong and actually showing it. The rooms are not pretty. They are not meant to be. The Hong Kong Government has pledged to squeeze subdivided units out of the housing stock over the coming years. Whether that timetable holds is another conversation. While those rooms still exist, letting a visitor stand in one for 10 minutes will teach them more than a week of harbour cruises.
The walk is roughly 2 hours. Reviews stay at 4.9. People who have lived here still come off it saying they learned something. That is the test.
Street food walks in Sheung Wan and the old Chinese quarter
Dim sum, wonton, barbecue pork, egg tarts, herbal teas, the Hong Kong versions of macaroni and French toast that confuse every first timer, dried seafood streets, and the history that sits under the shop signs. Groups are kept small. Guides talk about the opium trade, labour, and how a working harbour city eats, not about Michelin stickers. I do not run food tours myself. I leave that to the experts. Michael’s team do this well enough that guests book a second walk after the first.
Lantau: Big Buddha, a local temple, Tai O, and a fisherman’s home
This is the paid day that keeps coming up in 2026 reviews with Michael’s name on it. Cable car or bus to Ngong Ping, the Big Buddha, Po Lin Monasteries, then a temple that residents use rather than a temple that tour buses use, then Tai O and time inside a stilt house. Group size is capped, often around 16. That is the correct instinct. Lantau dies as an experience the moment you put 40 people on a pavement in the Tai O Fishing Village.
Kowloon market walks and history walks
Jade Market, Temple Street, Yau Ma Tei, the old Between Capitalism and Communism history walk. These are the cousins of the Introduction tour. Same method. Walk, talk, stop for shade, answer the difficult question.
Private tours
Yes, they do them. Michael was never going to leave that money on the table, and he should not. Once a guest has done the free or low cost walk, a private day is a natural next step. I have no problem with that. It is how healthy competition works.
What the Tripadvisor reviews keep saying
I read a lot of tour reviews. Many of them are generic and useless. The useful ones repeat the same few points until you have to believe them.
Guides are local and the English is strong
Groups feel smaller than the old flag and microphone model
The housing walk changes how people look at the rest of the trip
Food walks include the ordinary dishes, not only the ones that photograph well
Michael still personally guides, and when he does, guests remember the pacing and the jokes
Repeat bookings are common. Third tour with the same company is not rare
One February 2026 review of a Lantau day put it as well as anyone has. Michael took them to a Guanyin temple used by residents, then into a fisherman’s home in Tai O. That is the method. Add one place the brochure forgot, and add one person who actually lives there.
A note on large groups, flags, and my own prejudice
I have never liked a group of 15, 20 or 30 people being marched behind a flag while a guide talks into a microphone and flips a binder. I will go to my grave not liking it. Michael’s early history walks did get big. A 2018 review mentions a group of 30 and still praises the way he handled questions and crossings. Fair enough. He has tightened that over the years. Yellow shirts instead of flags. Smaller caps on the paid days. Two guides when a trainee is learning.
If you are the sort of traveller who wants a car, a flexible day, and no one else in the conversation, this is not your format. Book a private guide. If you are the sort of traveller who wants a few hours with a local, a price you can afford, and a walk that includes the awkward parts of the city, this is exactly your format. Both sorts of traveller are welcome in Hong Kong. We need both.
Left field thoughts, since you asked
A finance man who becomes a street guide is a better story than a street guide who becomes a brand. Michael can explain a pegged currency and a cage home in the same morning. That combination is rare and it is why the history walk works.
The rented subdivided flat is the most honest piece of product design in the Hong Kong tour market. I would like to see more operators spend money on access rather than on brochures.
Young local guides for the guests who book these walks is not a gimmick. It is matching. My own books have always leaned toward guests in their 50s, 60s and 70s. His books lean younger. We are not in each other’s way. Anyone in this trade who still thinks the other fellow is stealing dinner does not understand how many visitors this city actually gets in a year .
The company survived 2019 and the pandemic by turning to local guests and Cantonese guiding when the inbound market vanished. That is not a press release. That is a founder who can count. A lot of inbound specialists simply stopped. He changed language, changed the marketing, and kept walking.
I still think the word free is a slightly slippery piece of advertising. I also think arguing about the word while 40,000 people have used the walks to understand the city is a waste of a morning. The work is the walk.
If I were giving Michael one unsolicited note, it would be this. Keep the founder visible. The reviews that mention him by name are warmer than the reviews that only mention a roster guide. That is true of every good small company in this town. The moment the yellow shirt becomes only a uniform, the thing that made the company distinctive starts to fade., I do not have a guide team, if you book a tour with me you get me.
Why I write about people who do a different kind of tour
I get asked, more often than you might think, why I promote a friend’s tour business when we are all friendly competitors. The short answer is that the question misunderstands the size of the Hong Kong tour market.
The sheer volume of visitors who come through this city means the pie is very big. There is more than enough business to go around. A couple who want a 2 hour yellow shirt walk in Sham Shui Po are not the same booking as a family who want a private day built around their own pace. A student on a tip based Central loop is not stealing a senior couple who want the car and the long conversation. Each of the great operators has a unique place in the market. Michael’s place is not mine. Mine is not his. That is not diplomacy. That is arithmetic.
The other answer is simpler and older. The owners of the best 15 tour companies in Hong Kong talk to each other daily, and we have done so for well over a decade. It is a tight knit group. We share information because that is the right thing to do. An amber rainstorm at 7:00 am, a closed walkway, a visitor who needs a different kind of day than the one they first booked, a colleague who can take a date you cannot. Keeping that to yourself helps nobody, least of all the guest standing in the hotel lobby. I would rather send someone to Michael than watch them book a bad coach and decide Hong Kong was a waste of a Tuesday.
Book through the website, not the middleman
Like every serious tour company in Hong Kong, Michael would much rather you booked direct through hongkongfreetours.com than through an OTA. Tripadvisor, Viator, GetYourGuide and the rest are useful shop windows. They are how a lot of first time visitors find him. They are also a slice off the top, a delay in payment, and a layer of rules written by someone who has never stood at Central or Admiralty in August humidity trying to hold a group together. Direct is cleaner for him, cleaner for the guide, and usually cleaner for you. You can write what you actually need. Pace. Language. Whether Gran can manage Sham Shui Po. Whether you want the housing walk or Lantau. An OTA checkout box cannot have that conversation.
I say this as someone who has watched the same pattern across the whole trade for years. The platforms take the enquiry, take the fee, and leave the operator to do the work. Michael still has to answer the WhatsApp when a guest is lost. He still has to decide, on a wet morning, whether the walk goes ahead. A black rainstorm warning is rare, and if one is in play the tour companies cancel. What we actually live with, through much of the wet season, is amber. Amber means the downpour is real and the streets are shining, but the walk still goes on. Umbrellas up, yellow shirts wet, guests still learning the city. That is Hong Kong. If you already know you want Hong Kong Free Tours, skip the extra counter and go to the site. Use the OTAs if you are still comparing. Use the website if you have already decided. That is the polite way to book in this city, and it is the way he and the rest of us would prefer.
Full contact details for Hong Kong Free Tours
Company: Hong Kong Free Tours, also known as 香港自由行
Founder: Michael Tsang
Website: hongkongfreetours.com
Prefer a direct booking through the website. WhatsApp +852 9444 8472 if you need to talk through dates before you pay.
Email: info@hongkongfreetours.com
Telephone and WhatsApp: +852 9444 8472
Meeting culture: look for the yellow shirt at the stated MTR exit. Michael is more often than not at one of 2 stations, Central and Admiralty. I see him frequently at Central Station exit K. Specific walks use Tung Chung for Lantau and Yau Ma Tei for some Kowloon markets.
Office address on file: Flat 809, Mai Hong Industrial Building, 160 Wai Yip Street, Kwun Tong, Kowloon
Hours commonly listed: 10:00 am to 8:00 pm
Booking: website first. Tripadvisor and the usual activity platforms if you are still browsing. Reservations are expected. Do not just turn up and hope.
How to recognise the guide: yellow T shirt or jacket, company name on the back
If you write to them, be specific about dates, language, walking pace, and whether you want the housing walk, the food walk, Lantau, or a private day. They will get more of those messages right than a generic “what do you recommend” note.
My considered view
Hong Kong is full of tour companies. A handful of them have a founder whose personality is still in the product. Michael is in that handful. He picked a niche that made some of us in the paid private market uncomfortable, he staffed it with local guides who can talk to the people who book it, and he kept a couple of walks that most operators would rather not sell because they are not pretty.
That is not a small achievement. It is also not a threat to anyone who does a different kind of tour. The visitor who tips at the end of a 2 hour Central walk and the visitor who books a full private day are often the same person on different budgets, or two people standing next to each other at the same hotel breakfast. The city is large enough.
If you have friends or guests who will not stretch to a private booking, send them to Michael. Tell them to do the housing walk first, then eat, then decide if they want Lantau. Tell them to look for the yellow shirt at Central or Admiralty MTR Stations. Book through the website if you can. And if you are passing through Central Station, keep an eye out. That is where I see him most often, and after a decade of this he has earned the nod.
Jamie
4th September 2026
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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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