Old Town Central Hong Kong - Group Tours on the cheap
This Group Tour is designed for convenience and it is easy
Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years - I know the place.
I have personally completed 2,300+ Private Tours and 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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Old Town Central Hong Kong - Group Tours on the cheap
This Group Tour is designed for convenience and it is easy to do
Old Town Central Hong Kong
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“Explore beyond Hong Kong’s iconic skyscrapers and discover Old Town Central, one of the city’s oldest yet most lively areas. Stretching across the sloped streets of Central and Sheung Wan, this neighbourhood embodies a fusion of East and West cultures. Enjoy diverse culinary delights, award-winning bars, exciting nightlife and art happenings. Experience the blend of tradition and modernity, where historic temples coexist with contemporary galleries, and cha chaan tengs are steps away from chic boutiques.”
The marketing blurb above is courtesy of the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
There is just something about this title that winds me up something rotten, I understand the concept of marketing as I have been a sales and marketing consultant for over 40 years now, but this title has been created out of thin air when there is absolutely no need to.
The phrase Old Town Central is a made up term, it has no historical heritage and if you read all the text from my original post below you will get the origin story. (see below)
In a nutshell, the made up Old Town Central is meant to replace Central, Central District is the major financial district and leads into the Mid Levels (residential) and Sheung Wan (Business and Residential) - maybe Old Town Central sounds cool but not to long term residents, it is Central and that is that.
In the past 12 months there has been quite an increase in the number of tour companies offering Old Town Central Tours
I never do themed tours and basically do not do tours with a fixed itinerary, my private tours are all about flexibility, I have been in Hong Kong for 53 years so I have a handle on what my guests would like to see, many want to visit specific places and we can generally sort out the itinerary with a 5 minute chat when we meet.
I do not do an Old Town Central Tour, you could easily do it yourself in under 2 hours as all the places in the 10 images are very close to each other and easy to walk to but some aspects like the Central Market and Mid Levels Escalator I will do on my Jewish Heritage Tour, which has no fixed itinerary either!
One of the reasons I do not go to the Man Mo Temple or Tai Kwun is they have basically turned into Tourist Traps and are overwhelmed with visitors every day making for an unpleasant experience, Tai Kwun which was a major Government | Tourism Board initiative seems to be these days all about restaurants, cafes and gift shops, oh and a place for Mainland Chinese Tourists to take selfies and the Man Mo Temple is just overwhelmed with tourists arriving 50 - 100 people at a time on buses, a victim of it’s convenient location, it is a very small Temple and feels crowded with just 20 people in there never mind continuous streams of people arriving on tour buses.
,, and for the life of me I do not understand why any tour guide would take a guest to PMQ which used to be where Policeman and their families lived and has been basically converted into a large “craft fair” with the old apartments tarted up to house up and coming artists and such who sell their creations.. again this is somewhere you can easily visit on your own if that sounds interesting to you
I just think it is a shame if you picked a group tour to do this tour in your limited time in Hong Kong, there are far more interesting places to visit that combine Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories and with the right private guide you will have an amazing time.
I completely understand why Tour Companies offer group tours with basically a fixed itinerary but doing tours because it is easy for the guide with minimal effort is just wrong, I could absolutely come up with a group tour which would be far more interesting but then again I would have to cap the number of guests at 10 people maximum, it is a simple fact that the more people on the tour the slower it goes and a lot of tour companies have no problem taking around on foot groups of 40 people or more which makes for a totally miserable experience and yes, I have done these tours for research purposes
Creating a tour because it is easy to do for the guide is just wrong and I will not sacrifice my standards to make a quick buck.
To be honest you need to check very carefully these itineraries, for this example and on the same page they basically offer a 4,6 and 7 hour tour with the same itinerary and it is not clear what you will visit on the tour and why they have 3 versions? it is utterly confusing as is the pricing.
Please also note that assigning a time period for each stop is a complete and utter waste of time as there are just too many factors that can affect timing and again, the more people on the tour the slower everything goes.
Oh and for the Tai Kwun visit they claim that admission is included which is odd because it is free entry!
The 10 images below are the essence of the Old Town Central Tour or as I like to call it the Lazy Guides Tour, because there is minimal effort to visit these places and not much walking needed and everything is in, on or around Hollywood Road in Central.
The text below is from the blog post I wrote in July 2024 about Old Town Central and this blog post is an update, things have changed quite a bit in the past 10 months or so
Let me be clear, I am not a journalist, I have no particular talent in writing but I do try and get my message across in plain English and for some reason the Travel and Tourism Trade is full of copy writers throwing around horrible cliches like confetti at a wedding.
Social Media has significantly transformed the way travellers discover new places, leading to an overuse of terms like "hidden gems" + "secret spots” + hidden spots” and such. This trend seems to have been overlooked by numerous tour companies in Hong Kong and worldwide, the fact remains that in every city in the world residents know all the places to visit and honestly Social Media has rendered these terms meaningless.
Nothing in Hong Kong is hidden or secret, not anymore, I get roughly 20 messages every day from online magazines offering up a list of the best 50 hidden gems in Hong Kong and that coupled with daft name changes (Central to Old Town Central) create a lot of confusion.
It also never occurs to any Travel and Tourism writer or the HK Tourism Board for that matter that the vast majority of visitors have perhaps 8 hours to see Hong Kong and that is why you need a great Private Tour Guide to show you around Hong Kong based on the interests of the guest and personally I have never seen the logic of spending 2 hours travel time to visit a hidden gem that appears on a list for an Instagram Moment, if you are spending 10 days in Hong Kong then fine, but not if you are here for 24 hours.
Hong Kong covers roughly 430sq miles, that is an awful lot of ground to cover in 8 hours! (ps I do not do emoji’s sorry, I hope you get my meaning)
For a long time now I have been wanting to add Old Town Central to the list of cliches, this term was introduced into the World of Tourism by the Hong Kong Tourism Board in April 2017, apparently a Private Tour Company collaborated with the Tourism Board to push this name change and when you visit their website you can see why they pushed for the name change.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board is the public face of Tourism in Hong Kong and is a Government Organisation and works with other Government Departments who for some reason are also heavily involved in Tourism, the phrase “too many cooks spoil the broth” is very apt.
I have always felt that the Tourism Board should have 100% control over all things Tourism in Hong Kong and that they should work closely with private tour companies (the ones without a hidden agenda) rather than do things on a whim because a high ranking Government Official has issued an edict.
.. and this has never been so important as right now as Hong Kong slowly recovers from being decimated for 3 years by the Covid Pandemic.
I need to get back on track
If you click on the link above the Hong Kong Tourism Board describes in great detail “Old Town Central” so I will not replicate what has been written suffice to say that there was absolutely no need at all to modify the word Central and lengthen it to “Old Town Central”
Central has been in use since 1841 or thereabouts and everyone that lives in Hong Kong knows exactly what Central means, basically it is the business district and the cultural beating heart of Hong Kong.
It just seems silly to rebrand the District for no good reason, you could just as easily add the moniker “Old Town” too any part of Hong Kong ie Old Town TST, Old Town Sheung Wan, Old Town Western… you get the drift.
Hong Kong is a truly amazing city and I just think it is plain wrong to add snappy Instagram friendly slogans to places in Hong Kong, it creates a lot of confusion and there is simply no good reason to do this and it demeans the complicated and amazing history of Hong Kong.
One of the reasons I think the Tourism Board went with this rebranding is that they have had up until very recently a very tunnel vision view of how visitors | tourists coming to Hong Kong should be treated, their policy for as long as I can remember was to ensure all tourists saw Hong Kong on a 30 | 50 seater coach with a woefully inadequate tour guide (tourist guide in Hong Kong!) working from a prepared script for a 5 - 8 hour “tour” of Hong Kong which naturally included a visit to a jewellery factory (owned by the Tour Company) under the guise of it being a cultural experience! …. at some of the stops on the tour the tourists have to wear hats and stickers and are shown around by a guide waving a large flag so no one will get lost.
For me anyway the ignominy that happens at Victoria Peak is unmatched and has been a process ongoing for over 50 years. when you get off the coach to see the amazing views of Hong Kong you are accosted by a photographer working for the Tour Company, he takes your photo and a short while later you are presented with plates, mugs and keychains resplendent with your image on them and you are “forced” to purchase them.
I am constantly amazed that in 2024 that this practice is still alive and kicking.
I am a pioneer of Private Tours of Hong Kong and along with a core group of 12+ other dedicated like minded individuals we have changed the way that visitors or guests are shown around Hong Kong and 14 years after the Private Tour Market was formed only now does the Hong Kong Tourism Board recognise that this is actually the way they want Tourism to function in Hong Kong… 14 years!
Old Town Central - bah humbug!
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