While bus services in Britain have generally been in decline since the heady days of the early 1950s, there has been one area of bus operation that has seen significant growth. There has been a boom in overseas tourists to Britain’s historic towns and cities with the advent of cheaper long-haul flights and budget European airlines, along with the Channel Tunnel.

Bus companies started to offer tours of these towns and cities, often using open-top buses. This idea was not new. London Transport had an existing Round London Sightseeing Tour which had been started in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. In 1972 open-top buses were hired in as an experiment, this proving successful and services were expanded rapidly.

In Scotland, Edinburgh Corporation Transport had a long tradition of sightseeing tours. Elsewhere, sightseeing tours took off in such locations as Bath, York, Oxford and Cambridge. As tourists came all year round it became viable to operate separate vehicles and even invest in new buses. New developments included Hop-on-Hop-off tours and tours with taped commentaries in a variety of languages. New specialist companies began to emerge. Guide Friday started up in a small way at Stratford-upon-Avon and spread nationwide. They were replaced by the City Sightseeing brand started by Ensignbus which operates internationally.

Malcolm Batten offers a fascinating photographic tour of the sightseeing buses of Britain.

'Malcolm’s concise introduction charts the development of urban sightseeing services and the major brands associated with them. Around 180 well reproduced images reveal the variety of vehicles used on them, from the days when nearly life expired or damaged vehicles converted to open top sufficed to today’s purchases of modern low or zero emission vehicles specifically designed for the role.' * Bus and Coach Buyer, October 2025 *

Born in 1952, Malcolm Batten has lived in East London all his life, and has always had an interest in the local transport scene and the history of Newham. After a boyhood of trainspotting, he started taking photographs in 1969. Since then he has recorded the local buses and railways, in an area which has seen enormous change.