Since 1998, China Highlights has been a trusted expert in crafting private, tailor-made journeys across China. We go beyond sightseeing — helping travelers connect more deeply with China's nature, culture, and people. Our belief, “Highlights happen when we get closer,” reflects our commitment to creating meaningful, authentic experiences. From Beijing's Great Wall to the rivers of Guilin and the heritage of Xi'an, our dedicated travel designers and local hosts ensure every trip is personalized, stress-free, and inspiring. China Highlights is part of Highlights Travel, offering private journeys across Asia, including Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and India. Here's to more moments that bring us closer.
Reviewers overwhelmingly had a great experience with this company. Travelers frequently praise the dedicated team for creating highly personalized itineraries, noting that advisors remain exceptionally patient, responsive, and professional when organizing complex multi-city holidays. Consumers also deeply appreciate the seamless logistics, comfortable transport, and the outstanding assistance provided by knowledgeable local guides and drivers at every single destination.
Some reviewers were not happy with minor communication barriers regarding English proficiency, encountering an occasional distracted guide or receiving less detailed historical explanations during excursions. These specific issues with communication and guide engagement were occasionally noted by participants as areas requiring improvement.
We had an amazing personalised tour to China. It would not have been possible without all the advice and planning skills of Carrie.
All our transfers, hotels and tours were seamlessly organised. We only had to turn up and a guide would be waiting there to make sure each transfer, tour or check in happened. Carrie was available if we had any questions.
We were very grateful how stress free it was having the different language and organisation navigated for us and would definitely love to do another holiday this way again.
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
It’s such a pleasure your China custom tour was totally stress-free! Carrie’s expert planning made all arrangements perfect, and she was always available for any of your questions.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful experience.
The booking process was easy, the agent very responsive and the itinerary very flexible. We do the tour in December 2026 so hopefully the 5 star service continues
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
Glad the booking was easy for you. We was happy to be quick to respond, and the flexible itinerary is tailored just for you—we’re excited to deliver 5-star service for your December 2026 trip.
We deeply appreciate your kind words.
We are the process to finalize our booking for a great itinerary that Carol (our Travel Agent) has helped us to put together and so far the experience has been great.
We hope everything goes smoothly in April once onsite as the planning process has been.
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
Great to hear your planning with Carol is excellent! She’s crafted a wonderful itinerary, and we wish you a hassle-free April trip. Thank you for this note.
Mr. Chandler Wang provided a comprehensive itinerary and proposal for my trip to China. The proposal fully complied with my requests and included clear details and descriptions of each location to be visited, the types of hotels, as well as a detailed list of what was included and excluded in the price, together with the financial terms and conditions.
Mr. Chandler was prompt in responding to my requests for clarification, whether by email, through China Highlights’ secure website system, or occasionally via WhatsApp. His responses were very helpful, particularly in assisting me with visa arrangements and the recommended insurance.
The proposed payment methods are secure and the process was quick and efficient.
I am looking forward to enjoying the trip.
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
We’re thrilled Chandler created such a fantastic China trip plan for you. The detailed, request-compliant proposal, prompt multi-channel support, visa & insurance help, and efficient secure payments made planning a breeze. We appreciate your warm praise.
We have just booked a trip with China Highlights and the experience was excellent. Informed, helpful planning and very good value for money with an option to choose and if you want book your own accommodation.
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
Your great booking experience with China Highlights warms our hearts. Informed planning, top value and flexible accommodation—perfect in every way. Grateful for your recognition.
China Highlights (CH) arranged a private tour of the Silk Road for us in September 2025. The tour duration was 17 days, and we extended the tour by going to China a few days earlier and leaving a few days later. Overall, the private tour experience was positive. We stayed at a few excellent hotels, and a couple of noticeably bad ones. We requested some free days for self-exploring, and some of the places we visited on our own were better than the ones arranged by CH. We requested non-smoking cars, and one of the cars that picked us up at the railroad station was literally full of disgusting cigarette smell, which we complained immediately to CH and had the problem corrected. In all, we had an excellent time despite some of the unpleasant experiences. We wished we had another two weeks to experience more of the Silk Road. We do want to specifically mention a tour guide we met. All the tour guides were sufficiently professional and knowledgeable. However, a tour guide named Nur was the only one who gave us outstanding service throughout his portion of responsibility. He came into the train station and waited at the rail car door to greet us and help with our luggage. None others did that. He got with the locals during the tour and gave us special treatments such as picking fresh grapes from the grapevine! He even had his wife help us buy some groceries. He was the only tour guide who provided the concierge-level service we were expecting from a private tour. Thus to grade this private tour experience, we would give Nur a five-star and China Highlights a 4.5 star.
China Highlights 回复2026-01-20
Dear Walter Tam,
Thank you so much for choosing China Highlights and sharing your valuable experience of the 17-day Silk Road private tour! We are truly delighted to know that you had an overall pleasant journey, and we highly value your 4-star rating and sincere suggestions.
First of all, we would like to express our sincere gratitude for your high recognition of our tour guide Nur! His thoughtful gestures—such as greeting you at the train carriage door, helping with your luggage, arranging special local experiences like picking fresh grapes, and even asking his wife to assist with grocery shopping—perfectly embody the concierge-level service standard we strive for. We will pass on your sincere recognition and praise to Nur immediately, and we are sure he will be absolutely delighted to hear this. Meanwhile, we will also share his service experience with the entire guide team to elevate our overall service quality.
Regarding the issues you mentioned, we sincerely apologize and will take immediate corrective actions: For the inconsistent hotel experience, we try to select hotels of the same star rating. However, conditions in some cities, especially remote areas, are relatively limited. We will verify the situation with the hotels, strengthen service rectification, and further optimize the selection criteria for partner hotels to ensure that all selected hotels can meet our guests' needs. As for the unpleasant cigarette smell in the pick-up vehicle, we have strictly required our fleet to enhance management, implement a thorough cleaning and odor check process for every vehicle before use, and we will also strengthen the screening of non-smoking drivers and vehicles in the future to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Your feedback that the attractions explored during your free days were more satisfying is extremely valuable—we will take it into serious consideration to add more personalized optional attractions in future itinerary design, making the planning more tailored to guests' preferences.
We are both touched and honored to learn that you extended your trip to deeply experience the charm of the Silk Road. The grandeur and profoundness of the Silk Road deserve to be savored slowly. If you wish to explore this land again in the future, we are always ready to customize a more satisfying itinerary for you. Thank you again for your feedback, and we look forward to welcoming you back!
Customer Care Team
Leon was fantastic! Quick response, adaptable as we were a group of individuals wanting different arrival dates and departure dates for different portions of the tour. Added in high speed rail travel. Trip for aunties, grandmas and teenagers. Accomodated all of our requests. Payment was quick and easy using standard North American payment methods with no transfer service charges. Very satisfied with tour planning so far.
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
We’re so glad Leon exceeded your expectations! Quick responses, flexible for all arrival/departure times, high-speed rail included and all requests accommodated—simple NA payments with no charges. We appreciate your warm words.
Jason was very responsive to all of our requests and answered them promptly and professionally. He accommodated our special requests and provided a detailed tour schedule.
China Highlights 回复2026-02-02
We’re glad Jason’s service impressed you. Prompt pro replies, special needs met, detailed plan shared. We appreciate your praise.
I have a wonderful time travelling with my family to Guilin from Jan 4 - Jan 9. Beautiful sceneries..the rice terraces, rivers, karst, caves and countryside.
I am grateful to the tour coordinator, Carrie Zhang for arranging the tour from airport transfer, train, hotel accommodation to itinerary.
Yunnan next..
China Highlights was a great experience, starting with how responsive my travel advisor, Virginia, was end-to-end. She was helpful when I first reached out looking for a custom itinerary for our family, and answered all of my questions. She was super knowledgeable and helped build an itinerary that was a perfect fit for what we were looking for, and was flexible when I reached out with additional changes/requests. The team handled our itinerary, hotel bookings, train tickets, and connecting us with the tour guides in each stop. It was such a painless and enjoyable experience - my family is already talking about when we’ll plan another trip to China, and booking through China Highlights was a fantastic decision that we don’t regret at all.
Once we arrived in Nanjing, our tour guide John met us along with our driver. It was a very smooth process and they made sure it was easy for us to find them! John was knowledgeable of the area and provided valuable background as we toured the historic areas, including a visit to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial and the Confucius Temple area. The team was also able to help accommodate a last minute request from my father in law to visit the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. John also provided great dinner recommendations, and assisted us through the train station when we left for our next stop.
Overall would recommend visiting China with the help of China Highlights!
We booked 3 full days in China, from being picked up at the airport, to being dropped off. Carol at China Highlights arranged the amazing drivers, guides (Mark & Mervyn were both 5-star), hotel (New World Beijing was perfect), and entry to all of the attractions we had time to see. Every detail was handled to precision, they even corrected when our incoming flight was delayed due to weather. I wouldn't not hesitate to use Carol and China Highlights again for anywhere they book travel. If I am lucky enough to travel to the places they cover again, I will absolutely reach out to Carol first.
A good guide makes all the difference for a good trip. My family spent 12 days in northeast china and Dyllan Li was our guide. The weather was very cold, but his professionalism made our hearts warm.
He made sure we saw the best scenery, take the best photos for us and planned the best routes. He knows we are cold and hungry, so he made sure he called the restaurant before hand to make sure a table is available for us, pre orders our food so that we do not need to wait long. He planned his logistics well, so that we will have a smooth flow of visiting various attractions capturing the best views. One good example is he made sure we reach Ice and Snow world at 3pm, so that we capture the day view, the sunset and the night view. He also made sure we enjoyed different kinds of cuisine including Russia food instead of boring same type of food; it was yummy by the way.
Dyllan takes care of us very well, getting hot water for us every meal and even making sure the shop has toilet paper when we go in. It was all these little details, if i can rate him 20 out of 10, i certainly will.
As a person, Dyllan is a very cultured and professional guide; it really made us enjoyed this trip.
Thank you Dyllan!
I am from Singapore. After reading the reviews by many whom travelled with China Highlights, I decided to plan a family trip to Beijing, Xi’an, Shanxi and back to Beijing. Thanks to my travel adviser Leah Zhou whom entertained my many enquiries and changes in plan. She had been thoughtful and would highlight to me of things to take note of. I want to thank Leah for her lodging recommendation. My family is very happy with the lodging. In Xi’an, we stayed in Somerset hotel apartment rooms which were spacious and there is a playroom and swimming pool. We had fun playing table tennis, pool, arcade machine and table soccer. The hotel is next to a shopping mall and we could do some shopping there. Staying in the Chong Ning castle hotel (part of Wang’s mansion) and the hotel in Ping Yao ancient city, experiencing the olden architecture, modern facilities and hospitable service was a special memory.
Our trip was from 1 - 18 December 2025. I will like to thank our guides for making the trip a wonderful one.
When we landed in Beijing, we took quite a long time to finally come out from the arrival gate. We were warmly welcomed by our tour guide Selinda, with a great relief on her face. She had been waiting for a very long time and worried (I forget to install WeChat, she couldn’t contact me). We had arranged to visit Simatai Great Wall before boarding the overnight sleeper train to Xi’an. Though our time with Selinda was short, she was very caring.
In Xi’an, we are greeted warmly by our guide, Yuan. Our focus in Xi’an was on the history, with visits to the Terra-cotta site and the Shaanxi museum. Yuan is very knowledgeable about the exhibits. She also recommended Mr Wei burger, a local western food restaurant which serves good food at a very reasonable price. The tour package came with a promotion - a welcome dinner. Yuan brought us to a good restaurant. The dinner was superb. The highlights were lychee prawn balls served hanging on artificial lychee tree and edible dessert crafted as Chinese calligraphy brushes, and ink set. Before we leave for Shan Xi, Yuan even got her dad to make us nice bookmarks with local phrases on it as farewell gift.
Next was the most memorable 10 days of our tour spent in Shan Xi. I want to give a big shout out to our guide Jenny, a bubbly, pretty and responsible young lady. Also not to forget our driver who is cheerful and will initiate conversation with us (most in the family speaks Mandarin). We had to change hotel almost everyday and we had a lot of luggage but the driver was always glad to load and unload the luggage. Now back to our guide Jenny. When we first arrived, she showed us a map of Shan Xi that she drew as she introduced her hometown to us. She has a caring nature. She interacted with everyone in the family regardless young or old. She played with the kids when it snowed and held my mum’s hand when walking the steps. She would offer to take photos for me in the cold winter when the others were too cold to remove their gloves. When we asked to change our itinerary, Jenny responded positively and made the necessary arrangements. We appreciate her efforts. When Jenny saw that we would boil water from the hotel and bring our water bottles, she surprised us by arranging for a donkey ride and photo-taking at the Hukou waterfall using the fund allocated for providing bottled water. My family is very fond of Jenny. Knowing that she will be happy to help us, when we were later in Beijing and wanted to get food delivery to the hotel but did not have a local number, we asked Jenny if she would lend us her number. To no surprise, she readily said yes. I am glad to have Jenny arrange for a birthday celebration for my niece and I, who have our birthdays on the same day.
Finally, we parted with Jenny and left for Beijing. This time, our guide is Joshua. All the guides are good in their English, especially Joshua. We visited the iconic places in Beijing. Glad to see Beijing after the snow.
Thanks to China Highlights, I could arrange for a trip which everyone in the family gets something on their wish-list, for example, overnight sleeper train experience, horse-riding, curling and sightseeing of some well-known or scenic places. Great memories.
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