The use of fake Hong Kong images by Tour companies
We do not need fake images promoting amazing HK
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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The use of fake Hong Kong images by Tour Companies
We do not need fake images promoting amazing Hong Kong
Jamie is NOT an AI Chatbot
I am a team of one, I created the website, I keep it updated, I write all the copy for the site and my blog posts and I am your Private Tour Guide. I do NOT use AI in any capacity, it tried it once and I hated it.
So when you contact me you are dealing with me Jamie, I am human and NOT an AI Chatbot
… and yes, it is true, I hate the terms “hidden gems” “secret spots” and “travel like a local” so beloved by AI chatbots and used by OTA’s (Online Travel Agency)
Fake Hong Kong Images circulating on OTA (Online Travel Agency) Websites and Social Media Platforms ie Instagram.
I get exasperated at the worrying trend of Tour companies in Hong Kong using fake images to promote their tours. This is not a case of using photoshop to enhance an image or using Instagram filters but cutting and pasting to manipulate images to look quite different to actual reality and in some cases creating new but 100% fake images of places that do not exist.
Clearly OTA’s have no verification method for checking images submitted by Tour companies in Hong Kong.
I am a small private tour operator in Hong Kong and set up in 2010 and over the years I have watched with dismay as large corporations with deep pockets have come to dominate the Private Tour Industry around the world all of it being led by AI and more and more I am seeing fake images, fakes that would NOT be obvious if you are a visitor looking to book a tour but immediately apparent to a long time resident.
I should make a very clear point, I work very closely with the top | best 12 Tour companies in Hong Kong, we have an informal group chat and we talk daily, we also get together for formal and informal meetings and since 2011 I have forged very close ties with my friendly competitors.
We have standards, we all offer Private Tours of Hong Kong and quality is the name of the game for us, we want to ensure that our guests have the very best experience possible in Hong Kong and we are all pretty ethical when it comes to business practices within the Tour Industry in Hong Kong.
So on with the show.
A clearly FAKE image of the Big Buddha and NP 360 Cable Car in Hong Kong
click on the image to enlarge
This is the main image section of a tour listing on Tripadvisor in Hong Kong and you should know the following :
The picture of the cable car and the Big Buddha above is a total fake, the image I have taken below shows the reality, you will notice that in the image above that the Big Buddha is facing in the wrong direction relative to the cable car and appears to be a lot closer to the cable car than reality! I have been to the Buddha hundreds of times and the location of the Buddha and the cable car has never changed. my picture is totally accurate and I have no idea why they would choose to add in a fake image on the other hand it does suggest that the Cable Car Terminal is just a few steps away from the Buddha when in reality it is a minimum 15 minute walk.
I should point out that the odds of seeing a Pink Dolphin is very, very low, I have been hundreds of times to Tai O and done the boar ride out into the open sea and have seen the cute critters just ONCE and it was just one of the critters and if you blinked you would have missed it, I always make it very clear to my guests that chances are they will NOT see a pink dolphin, there are not many of them and the South China sea is huge! oh and the odds of pink cute dolphin named Flipper coming up to the boat and grinning at you are about as close to zero as you can get.
I should point out that the tour company in question is known to me and my friends, I have personally been on their tours, they offer hybrid walking and coach tours and honestly I have no issue with them, competition is competition and in the end quality will always win. With this tour that is promoted heavily on Tripadvisor, Viator and other OTA’s it has become very popular and I have been to the Buddha and Tai O twice in the past week or so and I was quite shocked at the number of large tour groups (30+ guests) trying to listen to a tour guide speaking through a microphone, all I could think of was the people on the tour where having a horrid experience.
The problem is that this image above and in particular the cable car image caused the tour company a huge problem as up until recently a ride on the cable car was NOT on the itinerary and you had the option to do it at your own expense and although the ride is awesome it is very, very expensive. It appears that they have seen the error of their ways and have now included the cable car ride in the cost of the tour and I do wonder if any people notice the inaccurate image of the Big Buddha facing the wrong way in the image and appearing to be very short walk from the cable car terminal.
click on the image to enlarge
This is one of my own images of the cable car ride and the Big Buddha, you will see the correct location of the Buddha and it faces in a different direction than the one in the fake image, the Buddha is a good 15 minute walk at least from the cable car station by the way, walking only, no transport!
So please bear in mind that on Hong Kong OTA listings you may well be looking at a completely fake image.
… and yes there is a proper tour company operating a Dolphin Watch Tour - see below
click on the image to enlarge
As I have mentioned the Pink Dolphins at Tai O I feel obliged to tell you that there is a specific tour company in Hong Kong that does 4 hour Dolphin Watch Tours, apparently with a 95% + success rate of seeing and interacting with the Dolphines.
I have personally never been on their boat tour but I have friends who have and yes, they saw the Dolphins.
The problem with the Dolphin Hunt offered by most tour companies is that you are out in a small boat in the open ocean for less than 5 - 10 minutes and then they come back in, this time frame makes it very difficult to see Flipper and his friends and the boat captain (and that title is a bit of a stretch) is on a very tight schedule.
In other words the Dolphin hunt is just part of the boat ride around the Tai O Fishing Village
Clearly the professional Dolphin Watch tour is out for much longer which means a greater chance of success in seeing them and yes, they have a bigger boat
It is a bit of a conundrum as they apparently only run the boat on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday (they should really run it 7 days a week) and to me anyway, it seems to be a waste of time to do a 4 hour tour of just Dolphin watching and then NOT visiting the Tai O Fishing Village which is infinitely more interesting (as much as I like Flipper and boat rides) and I have been reliably informed that they are and have been for some time only running the boat on a Sunday as not enough people are booking.
If I was the Dolphin Watch company I would have the option of dropping guests off the Tai O Fishing village, there is a large public pier that they could use.
The tour boat operators in Tai O are NOT professional Dolphin Hunters, they simply want to do the Dolphin Hunt in as short a time as possible and work to a quick turn around schedule so chances are you will miss the Dolphins, I am surprised that no enterprising tour boat operator has NOT bought a bigger boat and then offer a 2 hour Dolphin Hunt tour so to speak, starting and ending in the Tai O Fishing Village on Lantau Island.
A clearly fake image of a view point that does NOT exist at Victoria Peak, Hong Kong
click on the image to enlarge
This is a completely fake image and is NOT the amazing view!! The only possible location to take this base image (ie looking down on these buildings) is located close to 27 Lugard Road, there are no steps, concrete structures and green railings, just a simple black railing and a sheer vertical drop of some distance
I wrote about this specific image in a blog post in July 2024 and I wrote originally about it in 2022, the company that posted the image also runs a tour company offering tours in Hong Kong and yes as of 2025 they are still posting fake images.
So below is the original text from my blog posts.
Why I have issues with Instagram so called influencers
The quest to show “hidden gems” and “secret spots” means fake images are rampant
Let me be clear
I hate fake images supposedly taken in Hong Kong and posted on Instagram in an effort to get “likes” and this company hongkong.explore has a history of posting fake Hong Kong images on Instagram and despite them responding to me admitting they are fake they continue to post them.
This organisation posts something like 10 - 15 images a day and they get many thousands of likes and hundreds of comments for a typical post all in an effort to promote the Hong Kong app for a company called Tripscout
Personally, I do not think much of their site, the quality of the images varies markedly depending on who is taking the images, they use too many drone images and quite often they post images of places in China and pass them off as Hong Kong images, clearly editorial control is very much lacking.”
This is from a blog post I wrote on my J3 Private Tours website in 2022
For the sake of clarity I should point out that I have walked to “my spot” on Lugard Road at Victoria Peak over 6,000 times since 1972 to see the views
Victoria Peak attracts on average roughly 10 -15 million visitors a year according to some estimates and given the popularity of Instagram and other social media sites, images that go viral can cause a really big problem, I can only imagine how many people visiting Hong Kong in the 2 years since the image was published in 2022 have been really annoyed at finding out this view point simply does NOT exist.
Unfortunately comments made by myself, other private guides and Hong Kong residents complaining about the doctored image where drowned out by an avalanche of comments loving the image!
You can read my explanation below.
This image appeared on Instagram in 2022 and it is a completely fake image and despite a campaign by Private Tour Guides to have it removed, it remained and is probably still on the site, this is the problem with social media influencers, all that matters is clicks they do not care about the validity or authenticity of the image - this image within a few days garnered many thousands of likes and comments and if this place existed, wow it would be worth a visit but it does NOT exist.
For the record this perspective of “height” looking down on the buildings and across Victoria Harbour clearly indicated a drone was used but even that does not take away from the fact that those steps are simply NOT in that location, what is actually there is a very simple black railing and an almost sheer vertical drop down the mountain.
I estimate the drone was at a height of 550 - 650m, the reality is that the maximum height you can be on Lugard Road at Victoria Peak to take this image would be around 430m maximum. The top of Victoria Peak which is closed to the Public as it is a military installation is 552m
I actually know where those steps are, I have been down them myself in the 1970’s when I was kid and they are certainly not at the top of Victoria Peak I would estimate that they are at a height of just 250m (from sea level) maximum - I just feel really sorry for people that came to Hong Kong looking for that spot, it does NOT exist.
You can see my comments on the Instagram page under j3tourshk not that it made any difference!
As an enthusiastic amateur photographer I strive for realism with my images keeping editing to the bare minimum, Hong Kong is not blessed with blue skies and sunshine 365 days a year, we have 4 distinct seasons, however a lot of people use their smartphones and social media has filters that make images a work of art no matter what the weather completely distorting reality and influencers need image perfection to get as many clicks and likes as possible
For what difference it will make, I have made my point.
…. and finally
4 of my own images below of Hong Kong (I have taken 174,000 + Hong Kong Images) with some comments as they are quite real with minimal editing work done on them.
If you click on my menu link HK Images you will be transported to my Flickr site which is a repository for my 174,000 + Hong Kong Images.
I am NOT in any shape or form a professional photographer even though I trained as one in my late teens | early 20’s, in those days I was reasonably competent with my Hasselblad film camera. These days I rely on a very expensive Sony digital camera with a full frame Carl Zeiss lens, I leave it on auto 100% of the time.
Every image I take for many years now has been run through Photoshop, I simply apply the Camera Raw Filter and it is set on Auto and most of the changes done are quite minimal (as I have a great camera)
I have chosen these 4 as examples of images that looked like they where heavily edited, they were not, as a photographer every now and then you simply get lucky, the planets align and bingo you get a great image.
Hong Kong has many hazy days in the winter and in the summer the sun can be very strong and it is crystal clear and yes, deep blue skies happen every now and then, it is simply pure luck.
There is a big difference between using Camera Raw Filter for light editing in Photoshop and cutting, pasting and creating fake images for commercial gain on an OTA in Hong Kong.
My insider tip
Please note that in general if you book a tour on Viator or Tripadvisor you generally have NO control over what guide will lead your Private Tour of Hong Kong and this is the most important component of the tour. I urge you to check the actual company website and book via their website and do not forget to read Tripadvisor reviews as well.
© Jamie Lloyd | J3 Consultants Hong Kong | J3 Private Tours Hong Kong |
| 2010 - 2025 All rights reserved. |
Click on any image to enlarge to full screen
Current images from my Instagram feed
