Hello! Singapore Tours

What It Is and Where It Operates

Hello! Singapore Tours is a Singapore company that runs its own tours with its own guides. The footer names it as The Hello Tourism Company Singapore Pte Ltd, with Travel Agents License Number 02981, and the private tours page stresses that it is "not a guide marketplace" and that "all of our tours are delivered by our own carefully selected in-house team of guides." The homepage adds that it does "not contract or work with any freelance tour guides." All tours run in Singapore, from hotel lobbies, the airport or the cruise terminal, and prices are shown in US dollars.

The About page says the brand began with its founder, Laura, who moved from London to Hong Kong in 2011 with her corporate job and started Hello! Tours there before opening in Singapore. Sister brands Hello! Hong Kong, Hello! Tokyo and Hello! Yokohama appear in the site menu. The team, the page says, all speak fluent English, with "Cantonese, Mandarin and Malay language skills within the team."

Private Customized Tours

The main product is a private customized tour, sold as a walking tour or a car tour. The walking tour runs 4 to 8 hours, starting "anytime from 8am to 7:30pm (8-hour tours must begin by 3:30pm)," with pickup at a hotel, the airport, a cruise terminal or another location and an end point "anywhere convenient for you." It includes an expert local guide and public transport by MRT and bus, in English or Chinese, 7 days a week. Routes are shaped around the guest: Chinatown's clan associations and temples, Little India's spice markets and gold shops, Kampong Glam, the Civic District and the City Gallery's model of the city, or Tiong Bahru's art deco housing and hawker stalls.

The pricing table is published in full, and the page states that prices "are for the entire private group, not per person." A 4-hour walking tour is US$350 for 1 to 2 people, rising to US$615 for 8; the 6-hour tour, which the site calls the most popular, runs from US$440 to US$705; and 8 hours runs from US$530 to US$795. Children 11 and under join free, groups over 8 add US$30 per extra person, and tours starting before 8:00am or ending after 9:00pm carry a US$40 per hour surcharge. Entrance fees, food and taxis are extra. The car tour starts at US$575. The homepage adds that on a private tour "the only people on your tour are those which you personally invite," and says there is "no crossover between our tours," so a visitor with several days can book more than one without repeating stops.

Optional add-ons can be built into the day, each priced: a 30-minute Chinese tea ceremony at US$12 per person (minimum $24), a 40-minute Singapore River bumboat cruise at US$19, Gardens by the Bay at US$46 for adults and US$32 for children, the Singapore Flyer at US$40 and US$25, the Botanic Gardens and National Orchid Garden at US$15, and a Marina Bay bicycle ride at US$20.

Group Tours and Sails

The Flavours of Singapore Small Group Food Tour runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 9am for a maximum of 8 guests, at US$125 for adults and US$88 for children aged 6 to 11. It starts in the Katong and East Coast area, visits Joo Chiat and Katong, Old Airport Road and Kampong Glam, and ends in Little India, with more than 13 tastings such as kaya toast, Katong laksa, Hokkien mee, beef rendang, murtabak and dosa. The page says guests should be comfortable walking about 3km, recommends the private food tour for "guests with mobility concerns or families with younger children," and states it cannot accommodate gluten-free diets or severe allergies, with limited vegetarian options.

The homepage also lists a private 6-hour food tour with 10+ tastings across 4 districts, a 4.5-hour history and culture tour that includes a Singapore River cruise, a hawker center dinner and a Chinese tea ceremony, airport layover and cruise passenger tours, study tours, and a 3-hour sunset sail around the Southern Islands on a 40ft catamaran with light snacks, soft drinks and water activities. The company's 2 boats, both Lagoon 400S2 sailing catamarans, are also available for half-day, full-day and overnight charters of 2 or 3 days.

Guides and Booking

The About page profiles the guides individually. Gee Soo writes of receiving a tourist guide license "in English & Mandarin, back in 2008"; Bibi, originally from Denmark, speaks Malay, Danish, German and Norwegian; other guides include a former Singapore Airlines cabin crew member, a chemical engineer and teacher, and a classically trained singer who became a guide in 2023. The homepage says every guide went through "a meticulous in-house training and development program."

Booking runs through an online form, with payments processed "over a secure, encrypted connection through Stripe." The food tour page states that "full refunds are available for cancellations made more than 48 hours before the tour start time," with no refunds for late cancellations or no-shows. The private tour page says "tours run rain or shine" and suggests bringing a small umbrella, and the food tour page says the same. The site says both its private customized tours and its food tour have won Tripadvisor's Travelers' Choice Best of the Best award, which it describes as "the top 1% of tours worldwide." Contact is by email and phone.

What the Site Leaves Open and Who It Suits

The cancellation terms are stated on the food tour page but not repeated on the private tour page, so it is worth confirming whether the same 48-hour rule applies to private bookings. The car tour's full price table and vehicle size are not on the walking tour page or homepage, and the private tour lists guiding languages as English and Chinese only, even though individual guides speak more.

Hello! Singapore suits travelers who want a guide to themselves and a route built around their interests, from first-time visitors to cruise and layover passengers, and food lovers who prefer a small group of 8 or fewer. The published per-group price table makes the private tours easy to cost for families, since children 11 and under go free.