Why Hong Kong Has No Mid Size Private Tour Vehicles for 7 to 12 Guests
Send the Enquiry I Will Point You to Operators Offering Car and Coach Tours
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Why Hong Kong Has No Mid Size Private Tour Vehicles for 7 to 12 Guests
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Why Hong Kong Has No Mid Size Private Tour Vehicles for 7 to 12 Guests
Foreword by Jamie
Send the Enquiry I Will Point You to Operators Offering Car and Coach Tours
This is a subject that has irked me for the past 16 years
I wrote a long post not long ago about why I do not do car tours in Hong Kong, and why I send those tours to friends who do them professionally and properly. This piece sits beside that one. It is not a repeat. The first post was about my own walking and public transport tours, and why I will not put a guest in the back of a Toyota Alphard and call that my tour. This one is about what happens when you write to me anyway and you need a car or a coach. It is also about a hole in the Hong Kong market that still makes me shake my head after 50+ years of watching the roads.
I photograph vehicles when I am not on tour. Cars, trucks, buses, coaches, vans, school buses, the lot. I have well over 130,000 vehicle images on my own site, and more than 179,000 photographs in total if you count everything else. I have about 5,000 images of double decker buses and more than 21,000 images of trucks. I stand on Hollywood Road, in Sheung Wan, at Victoria Peak bends and on the Stanley roads and I watch what actually uses those streets. So when someone tells me Hong Kong is too tight for a mid size tour vehicle, I do not argue from a brochure. I argue from the pavement.
I have completed 2,400+ private tours since 2010. I have never owned a car. I have never driven one, here or anywhere else. That is not a speech. It is how my life has been arranged since I arrived on 2nd January 1972. It does mean I look at transport with a resident’s eye and a guide’s eye, not a fleet owner’s eye.
Why I do not run car tours or coach tours in Hong Kong
I do not offer car tours or coach tours myself because that is not how I show Hong Kong. Since 2010 my tours have been walking and public transport: the MTR (Subway), buses, ferries, taxis and the Street Tram. I want guests on the street, using the same systems residents use, not watching the city through tinted glass. I also do not want a driver, a hire firm, a deposit and a cancellation clause sitting between me and the guest. Once that contract is in the middle, I am no longer running the tour. I am managing someone else’s vehicle. Two car tours years ago were enough to confirm the policy. It has been a firm line for 16 years.
That is the short version. The rest of this post is what I do instead, and why Hong Kong still cannot seat 7 to 12 guests in one private vehicle without looking silly.
Send the Enquiry I Will Point You to the Operators Offering Car and Coach Tours
If a car or a coach is the right fit for your group, send the enquiry to me. I have formal referral arrangements with operators I trust. I will not dump you on a random booking page. I will give you a short list of expert companies who specialise in car tours or coach tours, and I will stay in the loop until the tour is sorted.
That is the whole point of the two banners I put up for this. I do not run the vehicles. I know who does them well. One message. I take it from there.
I will not name the list in this post. Lists go stale. People move. The enquiry comes to me so I can match the group, the date, the language and the shape of the tour to the right operator at the time you actually need it.
The guide is still number 1. On a car tour that matters even more.
I say this on almost every page I write, and I will say it again here because a vehicle makes people forget it.
The quality of the guide is still the number 1 priority.
On a walking tour you can forgive a lot. You can step aside, look at a building, talk to a shopkeeper, let the street do some of the work. In a car you cannot. You are in a closed vehicle for 4, 6 or 8 hours with one voice, one pace and one set of stories. If the guide is below par, you will feel it by the second tunnel. If the guide is only reciting a script while the driver does the city, you have paid private money for a moving brochure.
That is even more true on a car tour than on a coach. A coach at least has space. People can look out of different windows. A car is intimate. Five or six adults, a guide and a driver, knees almost touching. The commentary has nowhere to hide. So when I refer a car tour, I am not shopping for the shiniest Toyota Alphard. I am shopping for an operator whose guide I would sit next to myself.
A great vehicle with an average guide is still an average tour. A great guide in a perfectly ordinary vehicle can still save the tour. I would rather send you to the second of those.
Three labels I use so we are talking about the same vehicle
English speaking countries do not use one word for this, which is why the conversation gets messy.
In the USA a 9 to 12 seat tourist vehicle is a van. Tour companies print 12 passenger van and Sprinter van all day long. In Australia a 7 or 8 seat family machine is a people mover, and a 12 seater is often a van or a minibus. In Britain a 6 to 8 seater is an MPV or a people carrier, and from about 9 seats the trade calls it a minibus.
For Hong Kong I now use three labels. They will do very nicely.
Car. The Toyota Alphard class. Up to 6 guests in comfort. Sometimes a Vellfire or a Mercedes V Class in the same band., the standard Alphard is a 7 seater, 5 guests, 1 driver and 1 guide
Mid size van / people carrier. The missing vehicle. 7 to 12 guests in one private vehicle, with room for a guide and a driver.
Coach. The Toyota Coaster and anything larger. In the Hong Kong hire market that usually means about 24 to 28 seats. Some layouts go to 29.
Those three words stop a lot of confusion. When you write to me, tell me the headcount. I will tell you which of the three you are actually asking for.
What a car tour is, in reality
When someone says car tour in Hong Kong they almost always mean a Toyota Alphard with a driver for 4, 8 or 10 hours. It is a lovely car. Sliding doors, captain seats in the middle row, it photographs well. It is marketed as a 6 or 7 seater. That number needs a cold shower.
In practice you have:
1 driver
1 front passenger seat
2 captain seats in the middle
a third row of 3 seats that is usable but tight
If the guide sits up front, the guests sit behind and the conversation has to travel backwards. If the guide sits in the back, the guide cannot see faces properly and still cannot control the traffic. For 5 guests plus a guide plus a driver you are already at the practical limit, and that is before a suitcase, a walking stick or the water bottles people quite reasonably carry in August.
Typical 2026 figures for a Toyota Alphard with driver, and they will not move much into 2027:
From about HK$2,400 (about US$306) for an 8 hour weekday charter with some operators
Common mid range 8 to 10 hour packages around HK$2,800 to HK$3,500 (about US$357 to US$446)
Premium English speaking chauffeur services at roughly US$68 per hour, which on an 8 hour minimum is about US$544 / HK$4,265
Extra hours commonly HK$300 to HK$350 (about US$38 to US$45)
Holiday surcharges of HK$400 to HK$500 (about US$51 to US$64)
What is often included: the vehicle, the driver, fuel, sometimes tunnels and parking. What is almost never included: attraction tickets, meals, a proper guide fee if the driver is only a driver, extra luggage, child seats, and waiting time beyond a short grace period.
So hiring a car is not automatically a tour. It is a vehicle contract plus a guide plus tickets plus lunch. Compare it with that in mind.
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Toyota Tourist Van in Thailand, 10 passengers,NOT available in Hong Kong
The missing vehicle: more than 5 or 6 guests, fewer than 12
This is the part that is patently ridiculous.
Six passengers fit a Toyota Alphard, just. Twelve guests get pushed toward a coach. In between there is almost nothing in the Hong Kong private tour market that still feels private.
A family of 8. Two couples travelling together. Three generations plus a guide. A small cruise group of 9. They all want one vehicle, one conversation, one stop for the loo. They do not want two Toyota Alphards. Two cars split the party, double the fee and give you two commentaries that will not match. They also do not want a 24 to 28 seat Toyota Coaster bus with sixteen empty seats staring at them. That is not a private tour. That is a small group rattling around in a box built for a wedding.
People would rather sit in a mid size van or people carrier than in a half empty coach. I hear it all the time. The market still shrugs and does nothing.
Why the middle vehicle barely exists
It is not that operators cannot count or spot a trend
Hong Kong law gets there first. A private car is defined as a vehicle built for a driver and not more than 7 passengers. A hire car permit sits on that class. The moment you want 8 to 10 guests plus a guide plus a driver, you have left private car territory. You are in light bus or small bus licensing, insurance, inspections and a different set of parking rules. That is a different business.
Then the sums work against the middle.
A Toyota Alphard with a driver guide is a clean product. One staff member, a premium rate
A Toyota Coaster bus with 20 people is cheap per head for a cruise group.
A mid size vehicle with a separate driver and a separate guide means two wages on a group that is still too small to spread them comfortably.
The guest is asked to pay private car money for something that looks a bit like a bus, or bus money for something that cannot carry 20. Neither side of the market loves that, so operators stay at the two extremes.
What the booking sites like Viator are selling
I checked Viator while writing this, because that is where a great many first time visitors start.
The official Hong Kong Car Tours tag is showing 69 listings. That sounds like a packed market. It is not quite. Inside those 69 you also get Shenzhen in Mainland China trips tagged as car tours, transfers dressed up as tours, and the odd listing that does not belong in Hong Kong at all. If you strip it back to a private car or Toyota Alphard tour actually run in Hong Kong, you are looking at something closer to the mid 20s to the low 40s. The narrower Luxury Car Tours tag is 23 listings. That is the closer match to the product my friends sell.
Viator does not have a clean Coach Tours tag for Hong Kong. What it has is Bus and Minivan Tours, and that bucket is showing 100+ listings. Most of that pile is shared product: hop on hop off double deckers, Lantau seat in coach tours to the Big Buddha and Tai O Fishing Village, Macau seat in coach tours from Hong Kong, and ordinary group bus tours. A private coach for your own group is only a thin slice of that 100+.
So the big booking site is heavy at both ends and still thin in the middle. Car. Coach. Not much in between.
One listing on Viator even says the quiet part in plain English. For groups larger than 5 people you may need 2 Mercedes, because Hong Kong does not have vehicles with 8 to 15 seats. That is not my line. That is the marketplace telling the guest the same thing I have been saying for years.
Why Hong Kong does not offer a vehicle to seat 7 - 12 tourists visiting Hong Kong
I should knock down the excuse I hear most often, because it does not survive a morning on the street.
The streets are not the reason
People say Hong Kong roads are too narrow for a mid size tour vehicle. I do not accept that., it is nonsense
A Citybus or KMB double decker bus is the large object on those streets, not a Toyota Coaster bus and not a long people carrier. Those buses run Sheung Wan, Central, the Victoria Peak roads and Stanley all day. If a double decker can get through, a Toyota Coaster bus can get through, and a 9 or 10 seat people carrier is not bigger than the Toyota Coaster bus.
The vehicles that actually bully the roads are the giant construction lorries. Steel, concrete, plant, skip trucks, the long ones that take half the lane and swing wide at every corner. They are on Hong Kong Island, in Kowloon and through the New Territories all day. A not so wide road does not stop those drivers. They simply take the space. I have more than 21,000 truck photographs. I am not guessing.
On Hollywood Road all the way to Sheung Wan the bulky tourist traffic is the double deckers. Big Bus Tours is the foreign brand visitors recognise. It is not the biggest presence. Citybus now runs the large hop on hop off product under HK City Sightseeing, the old Rickshaw Sightseeing Bus in a new coat. Those open top double deckers cover Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. The H1 Heritage route is the one on Hollywood Road, past Man Mo Temple and Tai Kwun. Citybus has built that sightseeing fleet well past Big Bus in numbers, and it is priced for volume, which is why it lands so well with visitors from Mainland China. KMB has its own sightseeing layer too, the Tour HK open top buses and the newer HK2 style routes, aimed at the same Mainland China market, mostly on the Kowloon side.
So the streets already take:
franchised double decker buses
hop on hop off bus fleets that now outnumber Big Bus
goods trucks of every size
giant construction lorries
A mid size private vehicle is still the small object on that road. Width is not the hole. The hole is the licence class and the staff cost.
What I should have separated, and will separate here, is three different things.
Can the vehicle physically use the road? Yes.
Can a private hire vehicle stop, wait and unload where a franchised bus is allowed to stop? That is dwell time and enforcement, not width. The double decker has a stop. A private vehicle is looking for a kerb at Peak Galleria, Stanley Market or Hollywood Road while 8 people get out.
Why the 7 to 12 guest product still barely exists? Law and wages. Not Stanley being too narrow.
Some vehicles are already here. They just are not sold as private tours.
This is the part that makes the gap look even stranger.
Hong Kong public light buses are no longer only the old Toyota Coaster shape. Mercedes Benz Sprinter conversions and MAN TGE bodies are on the road as low floor and ordinary minibuses. They look like the mid size vans American and Australian guests already understand. Sixteen seats. German chassis. Sliding door. From the pavement they are exactly the vehicle people ask me for.
Schools make the same point from the other direction. Hong Kong has used nanny vans and school private light buses for decades. Plenty of schools still run a much smaller Nissan than a Toyota Coaster. Nissan has sold a 13 seat long wheelbase high roof school bus here, the NV350 Urvan type, a good metre shorter than a Coaster and closer in spirit to a people carrier than to a coach. Other schools run the full Coaster. So the city already accepts that 13 or 15 children can travel in a compact vehicle that is not a 28 seat box.
Which brings me to the question I cannot shake.
What is the difference between 15 children and 15 tourists?
If a school can move 13 or 15 children in a Nissan, and a green minibus can move 16 adults in a Mercedes or a MAN that looks like a van, why does a private tour for 8 or 10 adults jump from a Toyota Alphard to a Toyota Coaster? The children are not a different width. The tourists are not a different species. The difference is the licence plate on the side and the business model behind it, not the road.
I will be fair. A public light bus is not a private tour car. You cannot just paint a minibus gold and sell it as a family tour. The point is capacity and shape. The vehicles already exist in this city. The private tour market has not bothered to put a guide seat, decent air con to the back row and a proper hire licence on a 9 to 12 seat vehicle and sell it as the middle product.
In Japan and Thailand the Toyota HiAce and Commuter in the 10 to 13 seat band are ordinary tour tools. In the USA the 12 passenger van and the Sprinter van are the default small group machine. Hong Kong private tours looked at that sandwich and chose the two slices. No filling.
There is a Toyota Commuter 13 seater in some local hire fleets, often for weddings and airport groups rather than guided touring. It is not the standard product on a private tour page. Until it is, 8 guests will keep being offered a 28 seat coach.
What that coach actually feels like for a small group
A Toyota Coaster in the Hong Kong hire market is commonly a 24 to 28 seater. Some layouts reach 29. For a wedding that is a sensible machine. For 8 guests and a guide it is theatre without an audience.
You climb in. You choose a row. The rest of the vehicle stays empty. The air con fights a space built for 3 times your number. The guide stands or sits in a courier seat and talks into a void. Every time you stop, 8 people file off a coach door as if they were a tour group of 30. At Victoria Peak or Stanley that looks, and feels, like a coach tour. Which is exactly what the guests told you they did not want.
Typical 2026 hire figures for a 28 seat Coaster, and these move with dates and finish:
A 4 to 5 hour hire often around HK$2,080 to HK$3,200 (about US$265 to US$408)
An 8 to 10 hour hire commonly around HK$3,800 to HK$4,500 (about US$485 to US$575)
A Mercedes Sprinter in a 16 to 19 seat coach layout can sit higher, around HK$4,800 (about US$612) for an 8 to 10 hour hire in some quotes
Look at those numbers next to a Toyota Alphard tour. You can pay coach money to rattle around in a half empty box, or car money and still not fit 8 people. That is the sandwich with no filling.
What I will do if you contact me
Write to me with the date, the headcount, luggage, walking ability and whether you want a car tour or a coach tour.
If you are 1 to 6 guests and you are sure you want a vehicle, I will refer a short list of car tour operators whose guides I respect.
If you are 12 or more people, or you have already decided you want a coach, I will refer coach specialists the same way.
If you are 7 to 11 people, I will tell you the truth first. Hong Kong still does not have a proper mid size private vehicle as a standard product. The honest choices are two cars, or a coach that is too big. I will not pretend otherwise. Then I will still make the introduction, because you have to move, and you should move with people who care about the guide as much as the vehicle.
I do not take a booking deposit for those referrals in the way a vehicle company does. I am not the company you will book with. I am selling you a judgement I have spent 16 years and 2,400+ private tours forming.
The last word from the roadside
I like cars. I like coaches, I love trucks. I like standing on a corner watching a MAN minibus, a Nissan school bus and a 12 metre double decker use the same street in the same hour. What I do not like is telling a family of 8 that their only private options are two Toyota Alphards or a 28 sea Toyotat Coaster bus.
That is a gap. It is not a narrow street. It is not a shortage of German or Japanese vehicles. It is a market that settled at 6 and at 28 and never bothered with the seats in between.
Until someone fills it, send the enquiry to me. I do not run the car. I do not run the coach. I know the people who do, and I will not send you to anyone whose guide I would not sit with myself.
Jamie
Hong Kong
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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