Vive Hong Kong - Private Tours in Spanish, Portuguese and English going into 2027
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Vive Hong Kong - Private Tours in Spanish, Portuguese and English going into 2027
Foreword by Jamie
Lorena of Vive Hong Kong and the Latin Guide Team Behind 5,000 Tours
I first sat down with Lorena Fernández Chaves in June 2015. That is more than 11 years ago, which in Hong Kong tourism terms is a lifetime. The city has been through protests, a three year shutdown, a tourism rebuild, a flood of new operators, and more website redesigns than anyone should have to look at before breakfast. Lorena is still here. Vive Hong Kong is still here. And the thing that made her company different in 2015 is still the thing that makes it different in 2026 and going into 2027
She built a proper travel company around Spanish and Portuguese. Not a translated script. Not a headset and a flag. A Guide Team of Latin women and men who live here and can take a family from Buenos Aires, Madrid, São Paulo or Lisbon through Wong Tai Sin, Chi Lin Nunnery, Victoria Peak and the Tai O Fishing Village without the guest having to think in a second language. That sounds simple until you have stood in Central with a Spanish speaking couple who have just flown 16 hours and watched their faces change when the guide answers in their own tongue. I have sent people to Lorena for years for exactly that reason. The old post I wrote about her company has not dated well. The company has. This is the refresh.
Why this company still matters in 2026 going into 2027
Hong Kong is not short of tour companies. What it is short of is operators who picked a lane early and stayed in it. Vive Hong Kong was founded in 2015 after Lorena, who is Uruguayan, finished a 10,000 kilometre journey around China by train. She had planned 40 days in Asia. It became 5 months. Then it became a life. She did not start the company because a consultant told her Spanish speakers were an underserved market. She started it because she had just lived the thing she now sells: a stranger in a difficult city, trying to understand the place in a language that actually works.
That origin story is not decoration. It is the operating system. The company still describes itself as a cultural bridge between East and West. On paper that can sound like brochure talk. In practice it means a Guide Team that can explain feng shui without sneering at it, walk a temple without treating it as a photo stop, and still get you onto the Star Ferry and the ding ding tram before the light goes. Lorena’s own favourites in this city are temples, astrology and feng shui. After 54 years here I take feng shui seriously. So does she. Guests notice.
A few numbers that tell you the company is not a hobby
Founded in 2015 by Lorena Fernández Chaves
More than 10 years on the ground in Hong Kong, Lorena herself now past 12 years here
Well over 5,000 tours completed
Tripadvisor sitting at 4.9 out of 5 from 171 reviews
Ranked around the top 30 of more than 500 tours and activities listed for Hong Kong
Languages at the core: Spanish, Portuguese and English, with Italian also on the Guide Team
Registered and insured Hong Kong travel agency
Private tours, small group tours, Macau tours, airport layover tours and cruise ship shore excursions
Those 171 reviews are not a pile of empty compliments. Spanish and Portuguese speaking families keep saying the same three things. The booking was handled with care before anyone met at the clock tower. The guide adapted when there were small children in the group. And they finished the day feeling they had been walked through Hong Kong by someone who liked them. That last point is not a small thing. It is the whole business.
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Vive Hong Kong - Private Tours in Spanish, Portuguese and English
Lorena, the founder of Vive Hong Kong who still runs the shop
Every great private tour company in this city is still, at heart, one driven person. Lorena is no exception. She is warm. She is organised. She is far more serious about standards than the easy smile suggests. Clients like her. The Guide Team like her. I like her, a lot! and I have met her many times over the years, including a dinner in 2015 where her husband, a chef of real reputation, cooked a meal for myself and Amy of Hong Kong Kong Greeters that I have not forgotten.
She took time away to become a mother again and then came back and rebuilt the diary. That is the part the websites never quite say. Running a tour company in Hong Kong, keeping a Guide Team at the top of their game answering WhatsApp from a family whose ship docks at 7am, and still stepping out on the road herself is not a lifestyle brand. It is work. Lorena does the work.
She is laid back in the way that only a person who has already decided the standard can afford to be. The day is not rushed. The questions get answered. The itinerary bends if a child is tired or a grandmother wants longer at Chi Lin Nunnery. Then the next morning the messages are answered again. That combination, warmth with a spine, is why the company grew while a lot of louder operators did not.
A big link in a chain that is still too rarely named
I keep coming back to this, and I will keep coming back to it, because it is true and the trade still talks around it. A striking number of the great private tour companies in Hong Kong are owned and run by women. Not fronted by a woman while a silent partner lurks in the background. Owned. Run. Hiring the Guide Team, setting the standard, answering the awkward WhatsApp at 10pm, and still doing the tour when the diary needs it.
Lorena is another big link in that chain.
This is not a slogan and it is not a diversity paragraph written for a brochure. It is how the serious end of this industry actually looks if you have been paying attention since 2010. The companies that last here tend to be founder led. A lot of those founders are women who built a reputation guest by guest, then built a Guide Team around that reputation, then kept their name on the door when it would have been easier to disappear into an OTA listing. Vive Hong Kong belongs in that group. Spanish and Portuguese gave Lorena her lane. Ownership is what let her keep it.
You see it in the small operational facts as much as in the reviews. She chose a mainly female Latin Guide Team because that is the warmth her guests respond to, not because a consultant ran a workshop. She still takes the booking conversations that matter. She still goes out on the road. Clients and guides both talk about her as the person who holds the centre of the company, which is exactly what a founder is supposed to do. When I recommend Vive Hong Kong I am not only recommending a language. I am recommending another woman-owned Hong Kong tour company that has earned the right to be named in the same breath as the other great ones.
The language advantage is not a slogan
Let me be blunt, because this is the point people still miss.
If Spanish is your first language, you should not spend your only day in Hong Kong decoding English small talk on a moving Mid Levels escalator. If Portuguese is your first language, you should not be nodding politely while a guide talks past you. Vive Hong Kong exists so that does not happen.
Lorena guides in Spanish, Portuguese and English. That three language combination is still rare here. Portuguese matters more than visitors from outside the old map realise. Macau was a Portuguese territory. Portuguese remains an official language there. There are not many Portuguese speaking guides in Hong Kong who can take the same family through Kowloon one day and Macau the next without changing companies. Vive Hong Kong can.
Italian sits on the Guide Team as well. English is always available. Lorena has never been precious about that. If the guests want the day in English, the day is in English. When I can I will always send Spanish speaking guests to her as a matter of course. It is not charity. It is the right thing to do as I do not speak Spanish or Portuguese.
The Vive Hong Kong Guide Team
This is not a one woman show any more, and that is a compliment. Lorena chose, quite deliberately, a mainly Spanish speaking female Guide Team, with Latin men on the roster as well when the day needs them. The names guests keep writing about are not anonymous. Mary, who is Peruvian and has lived in Hong Kong for 22 years. Liliana. Alezia. Agustina. Saraí, who also handles operations. Vallerie. Pui. Gimena. Claudia. Rodrigo. The reviews mention them by name, which is how you know the company is not running a script.
What the guests keep describing is pace and warmth. Families with very young children. Older parents who needed the day slowed down. Cruise passengers with 8 hours and a hard back-on-board time. A guide who could talk history without drowning people in dates, then get everyone onto public transport without turning the MTR into a military exercise.
I should say this plainly. In this trade a Guide Team either holds together or it does not. Lorena’s does. That is not luck. It is hiring, briefing, and the founder still being close enough to the work that a bad day cannot hide.
What Vive Hong Kong actually specialises in
The company covers Hong Kong and Macau. Private tours are the centre of the business. Group tours exist for visitors who want a lower price and a fixed route. Layover and shire excursion tours exist because Spanish and Portuguese speaking travellers do arrive through the airport and the two cruise terminals, and they do not want to spend the gap in a food court.
Private days, in outline
Vive Hong Kong in 1 day, about 8 hours. Wong Tai Sin, Nan Lian Garden, Chi Lin Nunnery, Mong Kok markets, dim sum, Nathan Road, the Star Ferry, Victoria Peak and back down on the Peak Tram. A first day in the city, a short stay, or a long layover. Published from about US$580 to US$630 for 4 people, which is about HK$4,524 to HK$4,914 at the usual 7.8 rate. Confirm the live figure on the site before you pay.
Vive Lantau, 5 hours or 8 hours. Ngong Ping 360 cable car, the Big Buddha, Po Lin Monastery, and the Tai O Fishing Village. This is the day for people who want air and ritual after the density of Kowloon. The 8 hour private tour for 4 people is published from about US$700 to US$760, about HK$5,460 to HK$5,928.
Buddha and Victoria Peak, 8 hours. Lantau Island in the morning, ferry back from Mui Wo, then Victoria Peak. Published from about US$740 for 4 people, about HK$5,772.
Vive Hong Kong Island, 5 hours or 8 hours. Victoria Peak, the Peak Tram, Central and feng shui, the Mid Levels escalators, Soho, Man Mo Temple, the dried seafood streets, the street tram into Wan Chai, a wet market.
Vive Kowloon, 5 hours or 8 hours. Wong Tai Sin, Nan Lian, Chi Lin Nunnery, Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok markets, Nathan Road to Tsim Sha Tsui.
Night tour, about 4 hours. A high viewpoint, the street tram, the Mid Levels escalator, Tai Kwun, Soho and Lan Kwai Fong, Star Ferry, Temple Street Night Market. Friday and Saturday group departures also run.
A 5 hour private Island or Kowloon tour sits around US$420 for 1 to 4 people, about HK$3,276. That is the guide service. Public transport on the day is extra and usually under US$13 / about HK$100 a head if you stay on the MTR, buses, Star Ferry and street tram. A private car can be added. They use public transport as the default because it is faster in this city and it is how Hong Kong actually moves. I have always agreed with that.
Group Tours, for the price-conscious
Hong Kong group tour, about 4 hours, from US$80 / about HK$624 per adult
Kowloon group tour, about 4 hours, from US$85 / about HK$663 per adult
Lantau group tour, from US$165 / about HK$1,287 per adult
Night group tour, from US$90 / about HK$702 per adult
Group Tours are in Spanish on the published timetable, weekdays for the daytime routes, Friday and Saturday for the night route. Children aged 8 to 11 are listed at a token US$1 on some of the city days, which tells you they would rather have the family on the tour than argue about a child’s ticket.
Macau, layovers and ships
Macau is a natural second day for this company and they treat it as such. Private, maximum 6 guests per guide, meeting at the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal or the bridge arrival hall. Ruins of St Paul’s, Monte Fort, Senado Square, A-Ma Temple, Macau Tower if you want the view, The Venetian if the group wants the spectacle. Getting there can be ferry both ways, or a private car over the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge with a ferry back. Portuguese in Macau is not a novelty. It is the point.
Airport layover days run 4 to 10 hours, meeting at the airport or Airport Express Hong Kong station, with left luggage arranged if needed at about HK$87 / US$11 a bag. A 4 hour private layover for 1 to 4 people is published around US$460 / about HK$3,588. An 8 hour day sits around US$660 / about HK$5,148. Shore Excursions work the same way from Kai Tak or Ocean Terminal, with the clock running backwards from all aboard. Spanish and Portuguese speaking passengers are a real part of the Hong Kong cruise mix. Lorena spotted that early.
How a day with them actually feels
They will meet at the hotel, a station exit, the terminal or the airport. The itinerary is written in advance and then treated as a conversation. If the light on Victoria Peak is wrong, they move. If someone wants longer with the incense at Man Mo Temple, they stay. Food is not packaged as a restaurant crawl. You eat because you are in Hong Kong and it would be strange not to. Dim sum comes up on the 1 day private route because it should.
The Latin twist is real and it is not a costume. Stories run a little warmer. The Guide Team will talk about living here as outsiders who stayed, which is a useful angle for guests who are themselves outsiders for a few days. They will also talk about the city as it is now, not as it was in a 1997 guidebook. That balance is harder than it looks.
A thought from left field
Here is something I do not see written often enough. Spanish and Portuguese speaking families photograph a day differently. They linger. They want the grandmother in the frame at Chi Lin Nunnery. They want the children on the Star Ferry with the skyline behind them. A guide who finds that irritating will ruin the morning. A guide who understands it will build the day around it and still hit Victoria Peak before the cloud sits down. Lorena hired for that temperament. It shows in the reviews from Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Brazil and Chile year after year.
Another thought. Public transport is not a budget compromise in Hong Kong. It is the expert choice. The MTR, the Star Ferry and the street tram tell you more about this city in 20 minutes than a sealed private car on the flyover ever will. Vive Hong Kong defaults to that and only puts a private car on the day when the group size, the luggage or Lantau makes it the sensible tool. I respect that.
And a third. A founder who still cares about temples and feng shui will not give you a sarcastic tour of Chinese religion. In 2026 that is worth more than another rooftop bar.
Book them direct
Like every great tour company in this city, Lorena would much rather you booked on her own websites than through Viator, Get Your Guide, Klook or the rest of the OTA pile. I agree with her, and I say the same thing about every operator I know.
An OTA booking looks convenient. It also puts a commission layer between you and the person who is actually going to stand with you at Wong Tai Sin. Direct means the pre tour questions go to the office that will run the tour. Direct means a change of flight time can be sorted on WhatsApp - Direct means more of your money stays with the Guide Team who will walk you through Kowloon, not with a marketplace in another time zone. The Vive Hong Kong sites take the booking, take the card, and confirm. Use them.
Full contact details
Vive Hong Kong
Lorena Fernández Chaves, Founding Director
Websites
https://www.vivehongkong.com/en/
https://www.toursenhongkong.com
Email
reservas@toursenhongkong.com
lorena@toursenhongkong.com
WhatsApp and telephone
+852 6827 4952
Office addresses
12/F Ping Lam Commercial Building, 282 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Unit 910, 9/F Solo Workshops, 131-132 Connaught Road West, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong
Two addresses is not a muddle. Quite a few owners I know in this city run it the same way. One place is the working office, where the diary, the Guide Team and the actual conversations live. The other is often the quieter address for mail, licences, bank letters and the unglamorous paperwork still has to collect. Hong Kong makes you keep a formal footprint. Guests do not need to visit either address. WhatsApp and email are how you reach them.
Instagram
vivehongkong
Facebook
Vive Hong Kong
Tripadvisor listing name
Vive Hong Kong Tours In Spanish And Portuguese
They aim to answer within 24 hours. WhatsApp is the fastest route if your ship timetable has just changed.
My view, after 11 years of watching this company
I have lived in Hong Kong since 2nd January 1972. I have been taking guests around this city since 2011 and I have completed 2,400+ private tours. I know the difference between a company that photographs well and a company that still answers the phone in year 11.
Vive Hong Kong is the latter. The old blog post I did talked about a kind young guide with three languages and a Latin twist. That was true then and it is still true. What the old post did not capture well enough is the company she built around that gift, a Guide Team guests remember by name, a Macau product that makes sense, layover and cruise tours that respect the clock, and a founder who is driven without being loud about it. She is also part of something larger that this city still underplays. A lot of the great Hong Kong tour companies are owned and run by women. Lorena is one of them, and she has been one of them since 2015.
If Spanish or Portuguese is the language at your table, this is the booking. If English is the language at your table and you still want that warmer Latin pacing, this is also the booking. Write to them direct. Tell them what time you land, how old the children are, and whether you would rather look at incense or at the harbour first. They will build the day. That is what they have been doing since 2015.
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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