When tourists come to London for the first time they want to see the sights and for many that means taking an open-topped bus. Sightseeing tours are popular and big business, especially for those who find the capital's ordinary transport network complex, commentary-free and excessively roofed. Five main companies compete for custom, each with a subtly different offering on subtly different routes, and all at very different prices. But which tour is best, which is cheapest and are hundreds of thousands of sightseers simply throwing away their money? Spoiler: probably yes,
It's hard to get an objective opinion. If you head to the Visit London website it turns out they have an affiliate deal with Golden Tours and promote them heavily at the top of their list, with two other operators tucked a long way down and two others not mentioned at all. If instead you go to one of TfL's Visitor Centres they'll only tell you about Big Bus tours because, as I was told, "that's the one we do". It makes comparing the options very difficult.
I managed to get hold of all five operators' leaflets by standing at the sightseeing bus stop on the north side of London Bridge. They're glossy, full-colour fold-out leaflets because they have to be, partly for customers to clutch as route guides on the way round but also to sell the whole experience in the first place. Wow, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London all on one bus! But despite the apparent detail the one thing none of the leaflets mentions, not anywhere in any of them, is how much the various tour options cost. You are instead essentially at the mercy of the agents flogging tickets at the roadside, or in need of a thorough trawl of all their websites before paying up.
The following are the five main players, all of whom operate multiple buses on multiple routes with a hop-on hop-off offer and on-board commentary. Heritage buses, afternoon tea specials and bespoke themed tours are not included.
TopView are the new guys, the disruptors, although they launched with a tour guide on every top deck and have since removed them so the finances can't be easy. The other four operators are much longer-standing, even if originally under different names.
Every company has one proper sightseeing route up and down the riverbank and then some.
Most operators run three routes but sometimes these overlap a lot and sometimes they're a bit dull. An identical Waterloo → St Paul's → London Bridge → Tower Bridge → Embankment loop appears in all five itineraries. Three companies have a 'Green' shuttle which links hotels around King's Cross to their other routes at Waterloo Bridge, the only top sight being the British Museum, so these are nothing especially exciting. Big Bus and Tootbus both have a Blue route that's essentially their other route plus a loop around Hyde Park. City Sightseeing's Museum route is so short you could replace it with a walk across Hyde Park. All are just a little bit tortuous.
Golden Tours: 83 stops Big Bus: 51 stops Tootbus: 45 stops City Sightseeing: 39 stops TopView: 34 stops
Golden Tours has by far the widest coverage of central London, if that's what you're most interested in, with Big Bus in second place. TopView has the fewest stops but I'd say City Sightseeing's coverage is worse - one decent red circuit and a couple of brief antennae. Basically check the map carefully before you choose, especially if you're planning a multi-day pass, else your ticket might be quite restrictive and you'll end up paying ordinary TfL fares on top.
City Sightseeing: every 5-10 minutes from 8.30am-6pm Tootbus: every 15 minutes from 8am-7pm Big Bus: every 15 minutes from 8.30am-6pm TopView: every 15 minutes from 8.30am-6pm Golden Tours: every 20 minutes from 9am-5.30pm
When you buy a hop-on hop-off ticket you don't want to spend too much of your day waiting at bus stops so frequency is key. City Sightseeing wins this particular game by throwing vehicles at their routes, helping to ensure they'll likely be the bus turning up next. By contrast Golden Tours operate only every 20 minutes so you'll be hanging around more, plus they start later and finish earlier than all the operators. Tootbus is best for extended hours, but even then you'll be left to make your own way around in the evening.
OK here's the important one, the price of a one-day hop-on hop-off pass.
Golden Tours: £39 (£32 if bought online) Tootbus: £39 (£35.10 if bought online) City Sightseeing: £39 (whatever) Big Bus: £47 (£38 if bought online) TopView: £49 (£32 if bought online)
If you're a Londoner you might be screaming "how much!?!" at that list. £39 for a glorified bus ride is extortionate, even for an all day hopper with a commentary in your local language, and £49 is ridiculous. Most operators have rather cheaper prices if you book online, the heftiest discount (35%) being for over-pricy TopView. City Sightseeing is the only operator not to offer an online discount, so might look joint cheapest at first sight but is technically the most expensive. Big Bus is second dearest whichever way you pay, which sticks in the craw somewhat when you know it's the only one TfL recommends.
Alas nobody offers a simple 2 hour circular tour, only the more expensive bells and whistles networks, and that'll be the reason these prices are so high.
Here's another favourite offering, a 24 hour pass plus sightseeing river cruise (generally the London Eye to the Tower). All prices are online, the walk-up fare will be scarier.
Golden Tours: £37 TopView: £37 Tootbus: £41.40 Big Bus: £44 City Sightseeing: £45
TopView were bottom of the last list but are now joint top, such is the differential between online and walk-up pricing. Also note how the operators are only asking an extra £5 or £6 for your boat ride, making it a decent value add-on on top of an extortionate basic fare. For comparison the fare for a single Thames Clippers journey in the Central zone is £9 using contactless or £11.40 bought at the pier.
If you're planning a longer stay, a 48 hour pass with a river cruise generally costs about £55, but Golden Tours are much cheaper at £43.
Now might be a good time to compare sightseeing buses with the basic TfL offer in zone 1.
Bus ride with 1h Hopper: £1.75 Bus & tram cap: £5.25 Daily cap (tube & bus): £8.50 Day Travelcard: £15.90 Weekly cap (tube & bus): £42.70
Even the cheapest tour bus operator charges £32 to ride around on buses all day whereas TfL's cap is only £5.25, a full 85% less. For £8.50 you can throw tubes into the mix, and OK you can't do much sightseeing underground but it's still 75% less, or 50% less if you're contactless-averse and want a Travelcard. Looking more broadly TfL's weekly cap gives you seven day's travel whereas for that money on a sightseeing bus you'd only get two days. The on-board commentary, lack of roof and ease of use had better be important to you if you choose to go private.
Another important discriminator is the range of added extras your tour bus ticket gets you. These are for the "24h+boat" option.
Big Bus: four guided walking tours TopView: one guided walking tour Tootbus: three self-guided walking tours City Sightseeing: quiz booklet for children on the Blue Route Golden Tours: no extras
The walking tours are a bit of cheat because they only run once a day, so either you're at the Tower of London at 2pm for the Jack the Ripper tour or you miss out. As for Tootbus's self-guided tours offering, this comes across as miserly and cheap. All these walks are really doing is getting you off the company's sightseeing buses for a couple of hours so they're the winner here, not you.
And what if you fancy an evening ride to see the lights? Sorry that's extra.
These aren't hop-on hop-off, they're a single circuit. Usually there's a single departure so you can't just rock up wherever and whenever you like. Only Tootbus vary their departure across the year (currently 8.30pm), whereas City Sightseeing have fixed 5.45pm and 6.45pm departures which in high summer are never going to get dark. Golden Tours are the only operator with four departure times (6pm, 7pm, 8pm and 9pm) so you can choose for yourself, duskily.
What I didn't actually do, because it would have cost over £175, was board each bus and see what the on-board experience is like. Maybe they're so excellent that this cancels out the heft of the fare demanded. Here then are the Tripadvisor ratings of the five companies, five max. Sorry it's not more helpful.
While I was researching today's post I stood on London Bridge for half an hour watching the tour bus shtick in action. The keenest fellow was the City Sightseeing guy who regularly plugged his tours to passers-by and became particularly animated when a bus turned up, bounding over with a cry of "Anyone for City Sightseeing"? Such were his sales skills that he managed to sign up eight people in the gap between two buses, paused for a quick vape and then sank his teeth into another American family. The Tootbus guy was much quieter but still managed two sales whereas the TopView guy needn't have bothered turning up (and the other two operators hadn't). Played well, the sightseeing bus game is a proper cash cow.
But I did feel for the tourists rocking up and having to make a decision on the spot on absolutely minimal information, with no clue whatsoever as to the comparative deals on offer. A sightseeing pass might constitute a fairly significant proportion of their holiday spending and it was all being done on faith, I suspect frequently over-buying something they'd insufficiently use.
I should offer a conclusion as to which of the five sightseeing operators is the best, or at least the least worst, so I'll give that a go. It has to be either Golden Tours or TopView because they're the cheapest, assuming you think £32 a day is cheap. TopView then wins if your priority is frequency and operating hours, whereas Golden Tours wins out if your priority is geographical coverage (83 stops beats TopView's miserly 34). The operator to avoid is City Sightseeing as they're the most expensive with a fairly limited network. Only buy your tickets online, never from cheery uniformed staff on the street.
Obviously I'd suggest that tourists ought to plump for TfL services instead because they're massively cheaper, go everywhere and run all day, but I understand they can be confusing for newcomers and the routes aren't particularly optimised for a tourist experience. Instead TfL are happy to shunt visitors over to Big Bus if asked ("yeah, it's £48"), having concluded it's better to stay out of the game and collect a nice slice of commission instead.
