Tour Companies in Beijing

Has anyone used any of the following companies:Tour-beijing.com, china discovery, China Highlights, Catherine Lu, or Beijing Discovery?

I have gotten quotes from all of them> I just don't know which to choose.

We were extremely happy with our China Highlights tour. I ended up choosing them as I was able to specify no shopping/ factory stops and they honoured this with no problem at all. Excellent tour guides - very good English- reliable, prompt, flexible to change plans when needed, drivers and vehicles very good and clean. Bottled water provided. All in all, I can highly recommend China Highlights. Have a great trip :)

We were in Beijing in March 2012 following a cruise on the Diamond Princess.

I used a combination of looking on TripAdvisor.com and CruiseCritic to determine with whom I wanted to book tours. Since it was our first time to China and I was unsure as to what type of service to expect, I booked our two days of sightseeing with different companies as I didn't want to be stuck with someone for two day if they weren't any good.

We used the services of Catherine Lu (highly recommended on TripAdvisor.com) to arrange our pick up at the Tianjin port, transfer us to Beijing and give us a tour. She was not available and we had her colleague Maggie as our guide. We had to send $100USD by PayPal as a reservation and the rest was paid in USD on the day of the tour. We had arranged that all entrance fees and lunch be included in our price ahead of time. We visited the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, Temple of Heaven, and the Pearl Market. Our guide and driver were good and I would recommend them.

We used The China Guide www.thechinaguide.com (recommended by someone on Cruise Critic) for attaining discount tickets to the Chaoyang Acrobat show and for our second day of touring Beijing. This company is owned/operated by an American living in China, which appealed to me. They offer unlimited bottled water all day and lunch and entrance fees were included the price. We did not have to put a deposit down and paid in Chinese Yuan the day of the tour and night of the acrobat show. (On a complete side note - the acrobat show is a MUST see while in Beijing!) On our full day tour we saw the Beijing Zoo, Summer Palace, Great Wall at Mutianyu, and Olympic Venues. We had a great guide and driver.

If I were going to Beijing again today, I would book with The China Guide over Catherine Lu just because we liked our guide much better.

I am using China Odyssey in Oct. The planning and setting the final itinerary and etc. was probably more complex (my fault -- I had several fantasy ideas like riding the bullet train and pandas etc for 3-4 day tour:p) that needed but I am very happy with the excellent service I got from my travel agent Susan Su. She was pretty honest with me when I could buy tickets from Expedia cheaper than she could provide and she was willing to let me do my own hotels because of Marriott points/family discount. I will report back after trip but if the planning goes very well and they are responsive and on task then usually we enjoy the trip. Many good references last Oct. when I chose them from both CC and TA.

We used Tour-Beijing for 2 days of wonderful private sightseeing (the Wall, Forbidden City, hutong, Summer Palace, etc.) and private transfer to our Oceania cruise in Tianjin. Tina in the office was splendid to deal with beforehand, and customized our tour for us, accommodating my husband's slow speed and cane usage. Everything turned out perfectly, and our guide, Jordan, could not have been better - prompt, informative, and patient! While I'd been to Beijing before, this experience was far better. I heartily recommend using them.

Hi that trip to China was fantastic and the services of China Odyssey were fantastic. We were very pleased with the guide Stephen Hu for BJ and his driver was an absolute wonder -- driving in China is not for the faint hearted!! They also arranged all of our transfers and for another guide in Xian --Lulu. I at first was afraid of flying by myself in China but it was not at all difficult and we loved the terracotta warriors -- just amazing. We then flew to CAN and transferred for our flight to Bangkok and the Diamond Princess. Sometimes I can not believe that we have had these adventures :p The private guide and driver is worth every penny -- we saw and did so much and we were well taken care of. I tried to order silk pupa from the picture menu but Stephen gently told me -- not chicken nuggets!!! I highly recommend China Odyssey and even if you don't use them their website and Ezine is good for ideas.