Extracted from: https://dottedglobe.com/beijing-layover/
Is a guided Beijing layover tour necessary to see the sights? Can I just hire a car and driver for the day?
The answer to this is pretty mixed. We typically don’t prefer guided tours and choose to see everything by ourselves. However, since I was traveling alone with S-Boy, I chose to hire a car and driver for the day. This is the closest I could come to exploring everything by myself without worrying over public transportation and how to reach destinations of interests. Hiring a car and driver, that too English speaking, for ourselves was undoubtedly more expensive than a tour group. But then we had the privacy of our car and the freedom to build our itinerary as we wanted. Also, the car driver did not accompany us inside the tourist sites and I was happy to explore on our own just as we wanted.
I hardly regret this decision ad our driver was reliable, very friendly, and went above and beyond to help me as I traveled with S-Boy. He met us at the Starbucks outside Beijing Airport and helped carry our luggage to the car – all I had to do was send our flight number and arrival time. As it happened, S-Boy once again lost his shoe just as we exited Beijing Airport. I honestly can’t remember the number of shoes he has lost during flights. Our car driver retraced the entire route to find that shoe and on not being able to find it, helped me find a store on our way to the Great Wall that would have S-Boy’s size shoes. He also enthusiastically carried S-Boy around as I bought the tickets to entry sites and so on. The driver also gifted S-Boy with a stuffed panda! I would totally recommend this service to everyone.
The alternatives to hiring a car and driver are guided tours or using public transportation. Guided tours have their obvious advantages. If you go with reputed companies, the local guides are really knowledgeable and they have tours which specialize in layover. The advantage of layover tours, as opposed to regular city tours, is that the tours start after you land – so in case of flight delay, the tour won’t depart without you and you won’t have to fight for a refund. Also, the layover tour ends well in time to catch your next flight.
If you are wondering about public transportation options, the overall recommendation from Forums on Tripadvisor was that it is super inconvenient, complicated, and so not entirely feasible especially for Great Wall of China. The rest of the destinations within Beijing can be managed by public transport, but it is still inconvenient. You will have to reach the City Center which can be easily reached by taking a taxi or train from the Airport. From there you will need to take taxis to each destination. However, most people do not speak English and most signs are in Chinese so it can be hard to travel on your own. Also, Beijing being extremely populated, the traffic is quite horrendous and traveling by public transport takes time.
How much do a car and driver cost? Where do I find one?
Our car and driver for the entire day cost us 800 RMB. It included an English speaking driver, customized itinerary, wifi in the car and 9 hrs of car use. I got recommendations from TripAdvisor for car companies and got quotes from many of them. The quotes were in the range from 600 RMB – 1200 RMB, in the end, I went with the one who seemed most knowledgeable and gave me a good itinerary plan for the day.
Note: the driver was Hank Li, 3btaxi.com