Welcome
Welcome to London History Taxi Tours, I’m Billy, the owner of one of the best private tour guiding teams of London. You might be looking up what is the best option for you? But at first, your primary questions may include “what are the best private tours of London?“, “‘what is the best London tour company?“‘, “‘what is the best tour of London?, “how much does a tour of London cost?“, or, arguably most importantly, “‘are private tours worth it?“‘.
Well, this blog will answer just these questions, and much more. But first, it is important to emphasise the perspective of the writer. Yes, I am a London Black Cab Driver, yes I am a local tour guide, and yes, I value quality over bargains. If you are looking for the cheapest tour of London, and not the best, then this blog won’t help you. However, if you are looking for the most effective way of seeing London, then it most certainly will!
What are the best private tours of London?
The best private tours of London are the going to be those that incorporate a personable, knowledge-packed, friendly, exciting, and authentic experience. Many tours are usually conducted by tour guides with either one of two experience/skill bases: scripted and knowledge. If you book a tour with the former, there is a good chance that you won’t get much more than the tried and tested lines and anecdotes (which isn’t wrong if you’re happy for a basic tour), but the former… that’s what provides the most insight, authentic is experience and value!
You would have no doubt seen of the bus and boat tours. The boat tours are unique in their geographical and perspective setting, so they are good to book as a supplementary experience in-between other activities, but the bus tours, they are usually a gimmick. Bus tours are usually cheap but they are rushed experiences, that can only go down set routes (roads which allow them to follow their routes and wide enough to allow the buses to navigate around them). The rushed element is crucial. From my own experience, locations where I might spend 5-15 minutes pointing out many secret and important locations with stories and plenty of history, it isn’t rare for a bus to have driven through within 20 seconds to a minute… what have you experienced other than just ticking something off. If you value quality, you’re better off with a bespoke private tour, and the best ones are usually hybrid driving and walking tours.
There are many tour guides that offer between the latter option, walking and driving tours, but the hybrid option is less common, and typically offer the best solution and experience. You may be thinking that a walking tour alone is the best thing to do, but London is a big city with 10,000’s of sites, 2000 years of history, and at least a 5 mile wide stretch (east-west alone), so just bear in mind that a walking tour is going to be restricted by the area your guide will walk. A driving tour will offer much more range, but of course you don’t want to miss out on many of the smaller locations when driving. So, driving hybrid tours are the best option. This is where tours black cab tour of London with London History Taxi Tours excel.
Our Black Cab Tours of London are conducted by local London black cab drivers, local tour guides in iconic accessible vehicles that are certified tour guides – we have done the topological study The Knowledge of London and spent much time since that learning and researching the history of London. We know the streets, the culture, the history… London’s story. So what sets us apart from other “Cabbie Guides”?
This is where I make the point out what makes us aim to be the best tour guide company in London…
What is the best London tour company?
I will of course argue that London History Taxi Tours is the best London tour company in what we do, but of course this is subjective, so here is my argument. We’re not the first London tour company, but we try the hardest. I have above stated what types of tours are the best ones, and I believe that the Cabbie Guides provide the best method of tour guiding as you can get around easily in a London black, have many more parking options that other driving tours, and get down smaller streets. But, I would like to argue what sets us at London History Taxi Tours apart.
Firstly, we try harder.
Our tour guides are hand-picked, we only take on tour guides that are deemed qualified to deliver a high-quality, informed and entertaining tour. We don’t want to just guides, we want to be the guides. All of our guides that attained tour guide certifications, but we also undergo continuous research, training and development. We’re not your average one-trick tour guides. Myself, I achieved a First Class in a history during (graduating in 2024), many of my team have done other qualifications or have been in the tour guiding industry for years. Of course, the other newer guides, have not stopped learning.
We understand what it is like to visit a city that you have never been to before, or that you are not particular familiar with
Every single one of our guests that book with us are automatically entitled to my “Mobile Concierge Service“‘. I learned a long time ago the value of having someone reliable to guide my way through a visit. This doesn’t mean to hold my hand and completely take over my trip (I value living my own experience), but I also appreciate that that when I visit somewhere that there is much more to it than what I know about. The best example of this for yourself is to think of London as just Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Borough Market and so on… there is much much much much much more! So, what I offer, is my personal man-on-the-ground friendly advice when you book anything from an airport transfer to a tour. It doesn’t matter what you’ve spent or booked, you’ll get looked after as best as we can.
Also, on the point of having someone that really knows a city, I myself look for this when I go away. The best example that comes to mind of a place I thought I knew what to expect and what I would like is New York. I first touched down in January 2017, and I was fortunate enough to have a native New Yorker (from the Bronx) driving my yellow cab. He gave me the best advice, the best I got out there everytime I went. But, there were obviously gaps in his knowledge, so I realised that he couldn’t know everything. Yet, the information he gave me (of course I knew roughly what to ask) gave me plenty of opportunities to see the major stuff and the typical, but much more, enabling me to go to New York and have an authentic experience as well as a happy touristy one. Unfortunately, I never come across anther like him again, as every other cab driver was recently from the Indian subcontinent and unfortunately had only been working the job for a few years (I did ask in my excitement of conversation). Concierges were good, but not beyond obvious questions or high-end restaurants (less local knowledge).
Whenever I go elsewhere, I always look for the local authentic experiences in addition to the must-see touristy stuff, as well as attempt to gather local perspectives and mannerisms. If you’re visiting somewhere, do you want to visit only what you know of, or what’s being the vale that is the minority of public misrepresentation?
You want to know where locals go, you want to know the best places for fish and chips, a beer, another part of London to explore, and more!
But as tour guides, we value the fact that you have come to see the famous wonders, and we have stories to tell! But, what really sets us apart, is what many would called “Secret London”, “‘London Hidden Gems” or “London Off The Beaten Track”… this is where we excell. We go beyond the norm and deliver entertaining, fresh, rich, history-driven tours that aim to be the highlight of your entire London experience!
So why us? Because our taxi tours go beyond the traditional London sightseeing experience, but provide packed sight-to-sight history that will show you more of London that you could have imagined. When we emphasise that London has 2,000 years of history, it is our way of saying that every 0.1 second you are experiencing something new… We don’t provide one-on one-off sightseeing tours, but personal and unforgettable experiences.
What is the best tour of London?
London History Taxi Tours. That is basically the answer. In the previous sections I’ve stated that the best types of tours would:
- Be private and personal – personal guided tours of London
- Non-linear and adaptive (you are not stuck to set routes and mains, the tour can adapt to circumstances and taste)
- Hybrid walking and driving (optional ranges) allowing you to see as much as possible in detail
- With a local knowledgeable tour guide backed by experience and training
- With an experience London Black Cab driver qualified as a Cabbie Guide
- With London History Taxi Tours as we are not only certified tour guides, but a hand-picked team of the best tour guides in London constantly training and perfecting our tours
so…
What is the best way to see London?
So, our tours can vary in type and duration. It depends on what your time restrictions are. Here are some examples of our most popular tours:
4 Hour Classic Taxi Tour of London – Our half day tour of London with one of our tour guide team. This is one of best private tours for families. This private tour of London is the most ideal, it is the standard. It combines seeing the highlights of London with plentiful narration and stories, with a lovely blend of the off the beaten track London.
Billy’s Black Cab Tour of London – This is my personal tour. Billy’s Black Cab Tour of London is a personalised tour conducted by myself, a qualified tour guide and First Class (with Honours) graduate historian. There are 3 options of this, my typical tour, extended and whole day. But crucially, the tour is all about visiting London, getting plenty of Secret London Hidden Gems (off the beaten track locations etc), however, it puts a great emphasis on learning the history of London in additional to stories, anecdotes and facts. This is the ideal tour for those that want to really understand London, appreciating what they are visiting. Booking this option guarantees myself as your guide, whereas other options can be conducted by any London History Taxi Tours tour guide.
Whole Day Taxi Tour of London – This is the classic way of seeing the whole of London, there is both the option for all guides, or the Billy’s Black Cab Tour of London Whole Day Tour. This is the perfect way of seeing as much as possible!
Rock n Roll Taxi Tour – Visit the sights across London with significant Rock & Roll history, with our rock and roller Dennis (guitarist of the “The Limit” and more!). From Beatles, Stones and Jimi Hendrix, and more!). This is the perfect Rock and Roll Taxi Tour of London.
These are just some examples of our London based tours, we offer a range of themed tours, customisable experiences, and English excursions such as tours of the Cotswolds, Oxford, Stonehenge and Windsor, and more!
But, back to London. The best way to see London of course comes down to personal choice, but I would argue that the best way to see London consists of having a private personable guide with plenty of experience, local perspective, history packed, a considerate and adaptable guide, flexibility, walking with driving, and with an experience tour provider who wants to show the big, small, famous, unknown – London in its true form, not just a clock and a palace, haha.
How much does a tour of London cost?
In general, this varies significantly. Typically, you can get really cheap tours, but these options would either be conducted on rushed bus tours, or unaccredited walking tours. There are of course exceptions to this, as there are some great tour guides that work for tips, but the issues are as mentioned above that there are restrictions in coverage geographically and content. Essentially, the less you pay, the less you see. So, on the basis that the taxi tours are the best option of seeing as much as possible, with the option of utilising the black cab to drive to numerous occassions but getting out frequently (depending on guests’ mobility), you get the best combination of a walking and driving tour. Taxi tours can be priced from around £275 onwards (beginning with the 3 hour quick introduction highlights tours) to whole day London tours around £575. It does depend on what package you are after, but the key rule is you pay for what you get.
So, let’s say that you’ve opted for the whole day taxi tour at £575, or you are wondering is it worth it?
Imagine you’ve flown in from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or more, you would have likely spent anything between £500-£1,000 on flights (if not more, especially if it is the peak season, and you’re paying for each person), £400-£1,500 on accomodation… if not more, again, let alone allowed for a budget for food, museums and other attractions. So, let’s say that your trip is costing you at least £2,000-£4,000, surely you’d want to make sure that you’re going to “do” London efficiently. In this case, a whole day tour which would cost perhaps 5-25% of the base cost, which at the higher end sounds like a lot, but at the lower end, it is a bargain. Here’s why:
You want to ensure that you see as much as possible, but not fleetingly, but sufficiently… perfectly. If you’re going to journey hundreds or thousands of miles to visit a city, then you better make the most of it. You don’t want to spend all that time and money getting here just to have a compromised experience of it, leaving at the end of your trip having regrets that you missed a great deal, not visited much, or even having little understanding of what you looked at (“hey, there’s Big Ben, ok let’s move on” isn’t exactly experiencing a city, it is just seeing it).
So, let’s imagine you have done the whole day taxi tour, you’d have seen all the major attractions, having your tour guide tell you many interesting facts about them, helping you understand their place in history, but then have also seen so much more off the beaten track. Whilst 8 hours is a long time for a tour (of course you can have a lunch break), but in those 8 hours, you’d have visited, learned and appreciated at least 20x more of Londoner than average Londoner! So, in short, don’t just come to London and enjoy a part of it, but really experience it!
So, crucially, whilst arguing that London History Taxi Tours offer among the best private tours of London, let’s get back to one final question:
Are private tours worth it?
Yes! Yes! Yes! First I’ll offer a counter-argument to those that prefer groups tours, and then finish with why private tours are better.
There isn’t really a great argument against this. Many people however would prefer being in a group tour because of a potential social aspect, but, most people enjoying tours don’t want to spend their time mixing with guests and talking to others, rather listening to the guide themselves. If you are someone that is hoping for a social component, private tours are still ideal as you can really get to know your guide having conversation in between the tour.
When I have been in group tours before, I found myself up the front of the group engaging with the guide asking questions and having conversation between the stops, and I had wished that we had the guide to ourselves. As a tour guide myself, tours are always better when you have sociable and friendly guests, it makes everything better. In this context, when I conduct a tour with people like this, guests still get the sights and information, but it is made much more personal for them. So, you get more relevant jokes, insights and more.
Private tours are better because there are no interuptions by anyone else, the tour is shaped to some degree to the guests interests, and it makes the tour unique. No tour is exactly the same, and because of this, you have your own London experience. London History Taxi Tours does not adhere to one-in one-off tour guiding, instead, to summarise our ethos in one of two varieties of our slogon:
Learn London – Live London – Love London (experience it, be of it, love it!)
Learn London – Love London – Live London (experience it, love it, realise an authentic experience!)
Billy
www.londonhistorytaxitours.com
