Unlocking London's Best: A Comprehensive Guide to the London Pass with Daryl Bennett

In episode 106 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast, Tracy Collins chats with Daryl Bennett from GoCity, the expert on the London Pass. Discover how this multi-attraction pass can help you save money while exploring top London sites like the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, The View from the Shard, plus many lesser-known treasures.

Tracy and Daryl discuss the pass's cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and digital convenience, plus tips on planning your visit and using the pass to simplify and enrich your sightseeing experience.

Use our exclusive discount code at checkout - UKLP5 - for 5% off the London Pass, making your London adventure even more affordable. Tune in for all this and more, and set yourself up for a memorable trip to London

⭐️ Guest - Daryl Bennett from GoCity
📝 Show Notes - Episode 106

Transcript

Intro: 0:03

Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast. Your host is the founder of the UK Travel Planning website, Tracey Collins. In this podcast, Tracey shares destination guides, travel tips and itinerary ideas, as well as interviews with a variety of guests who share their knowledge and experience of UK travel to help you plan your perfect UK vacation. Join us as we explore the UK from cosmopolitan cities to quaint villages, from historic castles to beautiful islands, and from the picturesque countryside to seaside towns.

Tracy Collins: 0:41

Hi, I'm Tracey Collins and welcome to episode 106 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast. My question to you this week are you planning a trip to London and considering purchasing a London Pass A pass that offers access to multiple attractions in the city or is this the first time you've heard of the London Pass and would like to know more? Do you have questions about what is included, how to make the most of it and whether it's worth the investment, Curious about discovering hidden gems and lesser-known attractions? Well, in this episode I chat with Daryl Bennett from GoCity, who is the go-to expert on everything London Pass. He answers all of your questions and more. And, to make things even more exciting, stay tuned until the end to find out where you can find UK Travel Planning's 5% discount code for the London Pass. But let's dive into this week's episode. I started by asking Daryl to introduce himself and share a little bit about his background and his involvement with the London Pass.

Daryl Bennett: 1:39

Hi, so my name is Daryl Bennett. I've got a ridiculous title of Senior Regional Director for London and Dublin. That's a very fancy way to say. I look after all of the London attractions and the Dublin attractions that we have on. Our London products have a really first-class lineup of attractions, a broad range of attractions and experiences, and then I maintain the relationships with those attraction partners to make sure that they are continuing to be happy working with us and so that I can, in all honesty, negotiate the best possible rates for us so that we can pass on those savings to our customers to ensure that they get the best value from the London Pass when they're visiting London or any of the other cities that we operate. So London Pass is owned and operated by a company called GoCity, and London is one of 30 cities where we own and operate passes globally.

Tracy Collins: 2:40

So that's exciting. So you're in charge of the London Pass and the Dublin Pass, then Daryl.

Daryl Bennett: 2:44

Correct. Yes, and it's a little bit of a weird one. Within the company there are two products, the London Pass and the New York Pass, which have kind of kept their old names, and then all of the other attractions kind of have Go City in front of them and then insert name of city wherever it is you want to visit.

Tracy Collins: 3:05

Okay, right, so we are here to talk about the London Pass, so give us a brief overview of what the London Pass is and how it works.

Daryl Bennett: 3:20

So in essence, the London Pass is an app-based multi-attraction product that allows customers to visit attractions using a single QR code. So as my job is to go out and curate and build up a product with as many attractions as possible, so in London for the London Pass we've got 96 attractions and experiences and the customer can choose to visit either based on a set number of days sightseeing. For the London pass We've also got the Explorer pass which sits with it and that's a choice-based product. But if we're just focusing on the London pass, because it's kind of the granddaddy of them all, then the customer can select a set number of consecutive days sightseeing and then during the course of that lifespan of the past, they can visit as many of those attractions that we've collected together without further payment.

Daryl Bennett: 4:15

So the joy of the product is that we've kind of done a lot of the hard work and the research for you. We've gone out. I'm based in London, I've lived here for 30 odd years so and been in the industry for most of those as well. So know London, know the London attractions landscape really well and just try to make sure that we've got, as I say, kind of all of the key attractions but some of the smaller ones, some of the slightly quirkier ones, some of those that you'll only find in London, and then we present those to the customers on our website or the app, and then it's up to them to choose how many they'd like to visit, based on, obviously, their budget, the amount of time they're going to be spending in London and just their kind of appetite for sightseeing.

Tracy Collins: 4:58

And what would you say if somebody was considering buying the London Pass? So what would be the benefits for them of buying it? And you've already kind of mentioned, I mean, for me one of those advantages is the fact that you pay, and that's it. You've paid up front, you've got your pass and you can choose from those 96 different attractions, so that's an immediate benefit.

Daryl Bennett: 5:18

Yeah, absolutely. So. You've kind of, as I said before, we've kind of got that research already done for you. You've then got all of those key attractions in one place. So once you've bought your pass, you sync it to our app and then you use the app as your kind of city guide around London. But you've then always got those 96 attractions in your back pocket that you can reference back to. You have ultimate flexibility. So wherever possible, we try to arrange so that our customers don't need to book in advance. We can talk a little bit more about that later, the pluses and the minuses associated with that.

Daryl Bennett: 5:57

But if you wake up in the morning and, as it is today in London, it's bright sunshine, you might have been planning to go to one of the museums and you suddenly go well, actually, do you know what? It's a really nice day. Let's get out of the city, even. Let's go to Windsor Castle or let's go to Hampton Court Palace, and with the pass you've got the flexibility to be able to do that, because you haven't pre-booked anything. You haven't kind of assigned a specific attraction for a specific day. It also gives you that opportunity because there's in London 96 attractions to choose from. You've got access to attractions that you might not have heard of before or you might not have considered visiting before because you know it just wasn't on your radar, and so you've got that opportunity to be able to kind of dip into experiences and attractions that you hadn't thought about doing before. And the other I think the other benefit is that the app actually just works as your city guide, so it has a brilliant function, that it knows where you are in London and, again, going back to that point of visiting attractions you might not have before, it will tell you what your nearest attraction is.

Daryl Bennett: 7:07

So you may have been planning to go to, I don't know, let's say Westminster Abbey, but at Westminster Abbey you've also got the Jewel Tower right next to it. It's operated by English Heritage, it's part of the old Westminster Palace and, as the name suggests, it's where the jewels were kept before they got moved to the Tower of London. So do you know what? It's 50 yards around the corner. It's not one of those where you kind of Google things to do in London and the jewel tower comes up top. But why not? You've got a brilliant piece of history right next to all of the pomp and pageantry associated with Westminster Abbey.

Tracy Collins: 7:44

So that's perfect. So obviously you've mentioned a couple of the main kind of big attractions, but so what attractions? I mean because things that will spring to mind, you know going to be the Shard Tower of London, westminster Abbey, so all of those are included in the London Pass. What else have you got included in the pass? And some of those lesser known ones? I'm also interested to know.

Daryl Bennett: 8:06

So we've essentially got all of the key paid for attractions. So what you won't find on our London Pass is all of the museums and galleries, because in London all of the major ones are free. Where we've managed to kind of secure some kind of offer for our customers, then we will include them. So, for example, the Natural History Museum our customers can get a free souvenir guide from the Natural History Museum if they want to visit that. Or at the Science Museum, there's an IMAX cinema in there that customers can visit that without further payment. And we're constantly working with all of the attractions that we're not featuring to try and figure out a way of getting them onto the payment. And we're constantly working with all of the attractions that we're not featuring to try and figure out a way of getting them onto the pass. As far as the key attractions, yeah, the Tower of London, westminster Abbey, st Paul's Cathedral, the View from the Shard, they're all there. London Eye, madame Tussauds, all of the attractions in Maritime Greenwich, so the Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory, and that's just a fantastic day out and a great way of getting out of the city and getting a view of the city. We use the hop-on, hop-off bus services of Big Bus. We use the Uber boat, thames Clippers. That's a brilliant way to get around London and a great way to see London from a slightly different perspective. Shakespeare's Globe, the London Bridge experience if you want a fright experience, it's been voted the scariest experience in the UK for the last 20 years, I think. So, yeah, I'd have your lunch after if you were going to visit that one.

Daryl Bennett: 9:47

A couple of my little kind of favorites, I guess, is a fairly new attraction to London called Frameless. It's up by Marble Arch, for those of you that know London, and it's an immersive art gallery that features four galleries. I think it's kind of quite well-known product universally, so you go in and you are immersed into the picture. But it's, of all of the ones I've ever done, it's the best kind of experience that I've had. It's been, you know, really well executed. It's really good fun and you know I'm really lucky. I get to go to almost every single attraction experience in London and you can get quite jaded. I'll be really honest. It's like oh, here we go again, another new attraction. I'll give it 15 minutes and then I'll come out. I was there for an hour and a half and I didn't want to leave. It's fantastic. I am also often asked which is my favourite attraction in London, and that's. I can't pick my favourite children, but the one that I always quote or give back to people is Apsley House.

Tracy Collins: 10:57

Right, I haven't been. I haven't been there.

Daryl Bennett: 11:01

You should go. So the address is brilliant, number one London. It used to be the home of the Duke of Wellington and it's just got the most fantastic collection of silverware, of chinaware, of armoury and you know. It's quite an imposing house right on Hyde Park Corner but it just doesn't kind of look as if it's going to give you all of that beauty and history and fascination.

Tracy Collins: 11:26

So yeah, that sounds fantastic. So are there any exclusive experiences or special access provided if you've got the London Pass?

Daryl Bennett: 11:36

So the short answer, sadly, is no. So what we do offer, though, is there are a huge number of attractions that we have on our past products that our let's say competitors don't have. So there are other past products out there. You know, other supermarket brands are available, but we have a huge number of attractions on there that don't feature on any of those other passes. So that includes Tower Bridge, westminster Abbey, st Paul's Cathedral, all of the English heritage attractions, so that's Abste House, wellington Arch, so most of the attractions in Greenwich.

Daryl Bennett: 12:14

So, in terms of exclusivity, it's kind of they're exclusive to us, if you like, but with the attractions that we have got, there's a lot of additional discounts or special offers that London Pass customers can receive. So, you know, you might be able to just get a 10% discount in the gift shop or a discount in the catering outlet just by showing your London Pass. Because you're a London Pass customer, so yeah, and we're again Pass because you're a London Pass customer. So yeah, and we're, again constantly trying to evolve those offers so that we are offering our customers even more additional value.

Tracy Collins: 12:49

I think that's excellent. I mean, you've already got a massive choice of attractions, but also having the. You know, if you go in and you're with your family, with your kids, and you're buying some of those things in some of those museum shops, it soon adds up. So if you're able to get a 10% discount because of London Pass, that's certainly nothing to be sniffed at for sure. So it's kind of talking about money and budget, and I know this is a question that we get asked quite often is is it worth it, is it cost effective? So how does that compare? If I wanted to purchase individual tickets, Sure.

Daryl Bennett: 13:30

So there's another short answer to that one is yes, it is worth it, absolutely. So our most popular product in London for the London Pass is the three-day pass and that currently retails for £164. Now when you say that number out loud it does sound like quite a lot of money. I'll be really honest. But then if you just break that down, that's £55 more or less per day for sightseeing, the range of prices for the big attractions and, let's face it, if you're doing a three-day pass, you probably want to get in as many of the big attractions as possible pass. You probably want to get in as many of the big attractions as possible between £25 and £45 per person. So you just need to do two or three attractions per day and you've made your money back.

Daryl Bennett: 14:18

We actually give a sample itinerary on the London Pass website just to demonstrate the savings that you can make and we've looked at it really carefully to say is this practical? Can you do this? You know we don't want to say you can save money by visiting 24 attractions on your first day, because you can't do that. So the example itinerary that we give is that on your first day you'll do a hop-on, hop-off bus. You'll do Westminster Abbey, tower of London and London Eye. That's all perfectly doable on your first day. You might need a little bit of a break on your second day, so maybe take the river up to Greenwich.

Tracy Collins: 14:53

Yeah.

Daryl Bennett: 14:55

Do the Observatory, the Cutty Sark or the Old Royal Naval College? Shout out to the Old Royal Naval College, by the way? Oh.

Tracy Collins: 15:01

I love it. I'm always shouting out Actually, for Greenwich, I'm a huge, I love Greenwich. So I'm always saying to people you need to go to Greenwich, so yes, and I love the Old Naval Hall, wow, I go. Every time I'm in London, I go to Greenwich and I go to that hall. Honestly.

Daryl Bennett: 15:17

Yeah, for those people who haven't been, it's the Painted Hall and it's a Baroque masterpiece in an extraordinary building in Greenwich. It is stunning. Yeah, absolutely. And then on your third day, you kind of want to ramp things up again, madame Tussauds, up the road to London Zoo and then across the park to Kensington Palace. Look, they're all big hitters and they're all things that people will get to experience London and the different types of experiences and attractions that you've got. If you were to do all of those individually, current prices is going to cost you over £320.

Tracy Collins: 15:54

Wow.

Daryl Bennett: 15:55

That's if you were to just walk up to the gate, buy a ticket on the day, so you're. I mean this is crazy, but that's a 50% saving on 10 sightseeing attractions.

Tracy Collins: 16:09

And ones that people want to go to see, the ones that we hear about all the time.

Daryl Bennett: 16:14

Exactly exactly that. So you know that's a demonstration of the value of the pass is that it's a value proposition for the customer, and we're really careful when I kind of need to just think about the attraction partners that we work with here as well we're really careful when we talk to them. We always show what the retail price is of the attractions themselves so that the customer can make their own decision as to whether or not this is value. But we're also never in a position where we're devaluing the attractions proposition as well. So we want to always make sure that we're not going in saying save 75% at Tower of London. That's not what we're about. It's we're putting all of this together. The customer makes their choice and they can see what it would cost them ordinarily.

Tracy Collins: 17:03

Yeah. So it's a good idea to kind of work out what you want to go and see. If you want to spend the time working out how much it's going to cost which obviously you can do you can sit and work it out but say there's an example on your website so you can have a look, work out the cost and then compare it to how much the London Pass is and then when you go, actually I think I'll buy a London Pass. It sounds like that's going to be the best option for us when we visit London. So how far in advance do people need to buy the London Pass?

Daryl Bennett: 17:31

So they can buy it on the day that they're planning their first visit, or they can buy it up to two years in advance. So if I was to buy a London Pass today, it would still be valid on the 25th of June 2026. The average lead time at this time of year is probably about two to three weeks, so that it tends to be a little bit longer at the beginning of the year, in January and February, when people are really in that kind of planning phase for their summer holidays. Apologies to anybody in the Southern Hemisphere if it's the other way around.

Tracy Collins: 18:06

Yeah, winter holidays.

Daryl Bennett: 18:09

The only thing I would say is there are a few attractions on the London Pass that absolutely do require booking. So the further in advance that you buy the pass, the longer lead time you have in terms of making a reservation at those ones. And if they're on your kind of must-see bucket list, then I would recommend booking a little bit further in advance, or buying the pass a little bit further in advance and we shout out on the website and the app which attractions require reservations, so that again you can help to plan your time.

Tracy Collins: 18:42

Okay, and I think that's important because, again, you can help to plan your time. Okay, and I think that's important because, again, I think it's something that we do often get asked do I need to make a booking before? For some of the you know, like the Shard, for example, and we always say check on the website, because you have the up-to-date list of exactly what needs to be booked and and how far in advance and when. Um, so we always kind of point people back in in your direction. Um, and I think that's a really valid thing to think about is like, if you are planning and some of those sites that you want to see, you do require a bit of advanced book, in particular at times a year, like now june, july, august when the peak time is that you do need to be thinking ahead because you don't want to get it and then you've left it too late to book anything. You know those particular things.

Daryl Bennett: 19:30

And of the key attractions that absolutely need to be booked in advance are the London Eye, Madam Tussauds and the View from the Shard. So all of those are reservation essential. And then, unsurprisingly, the walking tours. Most of those require booking in advance because the tour guides need to know how many people are going to turn up, so that they need to know and can work out whether they need to turn up.

Tracy Collins: 19:55

Yeah, no, absolutely. So. Let's move on to how the London Pass is presented. So I know you mentioned digitally. Is it also in a physical format or is it all digital?

Daryl Bennett: 20:08

It is all digital now. So pre-COVID we had physical London Passes. They were kind of like little plastic credit cards, but we're helping to save the planet so we've gone digital now. So once someone has purchased a pass, either from our website or our app, then they're sent an email confirmation with their order number and then they link that order number to our app and then they delivered a QR code. And that's one single QR code per person, per pass, right that is used to access all of the attractions.

Daryl Bennett: 20:44

So we provide all of our attraction partners with the wherewithal to be able to scan and validate those QR codes. So when the customer arrives, they just have to show the QR code to the admission staff at the ticket desk or the booth, wherever that is. And again, again, all of that information is on the website about what you do when you get to the attraction as much as we can, because sometimes it changes, so we make sure we keep that as up-to-date as possible. So, yeah, the customer just um shows their qr code, it's scanned, it validates it to say, yes, this is um, this is indeed a london pass, not just a qr code from a box of cornflakes. And in, you go and enjoy your experience.

Tracy Collins: 21:25

That's perfect. So what should visitors be aware of to ensure they get the most out of having the London pass?

Daryl Bennett: 21:31

Yes, so I would say plan, just have a look at all of the attractions that are on there. There's an option to be able to filter by map view so that you can kind of see which attractions are close by, because you might have two really favorite attractions that you think you can do in one day and actually they're on completely the opposite sides of London. So I would just say, just plan and be realistic that it takes a little bit longer to get around London than you might think, especially if you're traveling by kind of road. You know if you're using the bus to get around, you can get stuck in traffic. So I would just say plan, leave enough time between attractions to be able to get from one to the other without panicking, because there's nothing worse when you're going.

Daryl Bennett: 22:26

I've got to get, especially if you've got a reservation somewhere. It's like I've got to get to the London Eye for 11 o'clock and it's half past 10 and I'm still in London Zoo. It's like, well, you're never going to make it. So just, I think it's just just plan your day, give yourself the space to breathe, because you can then enjoy the experience and you can enjoy London while you're getting from one attraction to the other.

Daryl Bennett: 22:51

I think the other thing kind of a little bit of advice I always give to people is see if you can walk between the two, because it's often quicker, easier, nicer, less stressful and you get to see London while you're doing it. So yeah, I think that's. You know, a key takeout is just to just to plan your day. You know you've got all of the information that you need in front of you so you can figure out the your best routes and your best options for each day and maybe just kind of keep a spare in your back pocket in case the weather changes and you know suddenly you want to be outside or you need to be inside Again. The pass gives you the option to be able to just have that flexibility.

Tracy Collins: 23:34

That's perfect. So what kind of customer support is available if you have the London Pass?

Daryl Bennett: 23:40

So it's all available on the app. There are different options and different means and ways of contacting us. If you have any issues, we provide all of the information as well to our attraction partners. So if there's an issue for whatever reason at the gate, they're able to provide that information to you. But we've got a call us function, we've got a WhatsApp, we've got a chatbot. I think we're about to launch a new one soon. That's a little bit more intuitive Numbers to call, depending on where you're calling from as well. So all of that's available and there's an email address if you need to get in touch with us. We've given everybody as many different means of communication to get hold of us should they have any problems. But hopefully because you brought the london pass there, won't be any, exactly, exactly.

Tracy Collins: 24:27

Well, it's been fantastic chatting to you, daryl, and finding out all about the london pass. I know I I asked in our facebook group and our uk travel planning facebook group what questions had, and so I'm sure they'll be really happy to listen to this and all of the listeners around the world that are interested in buying the London Pass to find out as much information as they have from this episode. So that's fantastic, but I always end the episode with the same question for every single person, person. So the question I'm going to ask you is predictable for all our listeners, they'll know is what is the one tip that you would give to anybody visiting London for the first time?

Daryl Bennett: 25:04

Oh, you need me to narrow this down to one tip. I do. Well, I've kind of hinted at one, which is walk, my one tip. Am I allowed to?

Tracy Collins: 25:14

Oh, go for it, go on, go on.

Daryl Bennett: 25:16

No, okay, my one tip is look up.

Tracy Collins: 25:19

Yes.

Daryl Bennett: 25:19

Because there is so much to see that you don't see. If you're kind of buried in a guidebook or I shouldn't say this, but buried in the app, but you know you need to check your app and then look up and if you can use the river.

Tracy Collins: 25:33

Oh, absolutely, but thank you so much, daryl, for coming on to the podcast this week. It's been fantastic to chat with you about the London Pass, so I hope you enjoyed it.

Daryl Bennett: 25:43

It's been my absolute pleasure, and thanks for letting us have the opportunity to talk a little bit more about this fantastic product.

Tracy Collins: 25:50

Well, what a fun and informative episode that was. Thanks again, Daryl, for coming on to the podcast and sharing your expertise and knowledge of the London Pass. As promised, you will find our discount code for 5% off the pass in this week's show notes at uktravelplanetcom. Forward slash episode 106. But that just leaves me to say, as always, until next week, happy UK travel planning.