About Leonida Tours: Hospitality People, Local Operators

Leonida Tours is a Miami hospitality company that runs small-group city tours, boat trips on Biscayne Bay, and Everglades and Florida Keys day trips. We are not a bus company that got a website. We are hospitality professionals - front desk, concierge, restaurant and club people - who spent years watching visitors arrive in this city and leave having seen a postcard instead of a city.

Why we exist

Miami is one of the most visited cities on earth and one of the least explained. Visitors arrive, see the beach, take a selfie, and leave without knowing that the murals are two miles north, that the best sunset is from the water rather than the sand, or that the wetland half an hour west is the largest of its kind on the continent.

And fans of the worlds we grew up with kept asking the same question: is the city in the trailers real, and can I go there? Yes to both, but nobody was making it easy. Not the scene-by-scene breakdowns, not the honest answer about which shot is a composite, and definitely not a way to spend one morning in the actual places.

We run small groups and real routes rather than a list of stops. That is slower, it earns less, and it is the only version of this job we were interested in doing.

Who we are

• Hospitality professionals first. We came out of hotels, restaurants, clubs and concierge desks in Miami. We know what a good host does, because we did it for a living, every single day, for years.
• Operators, not brokers. We vet every partner we work with, we are on the tour with you, and a problem on your day is our problem rather than somebody else's.
• Small on purpose. The people who answer your messages are the people who run your tour. Nothing is outsourced to a call centre.

How the partnership works

The best tours in this city already exist. They are run by families who have been taking airboats into the sawgrass for three generations, by captains who grew up on Biscayne Bay, and by drivers who know every shortcut, every lunch stop and every pull-off between here and Key Largo. Rather than pretending we could out-drive them, we partnered with them.

• Local operators we trust. The Everglades airboat families, the Biscayne Bay captains, the Keys drivers and the city-route specialists run the routes they have run for years, on their own licences, in their own vehicles.
• We handle everything around the tour. One booking, one invoice, one point of contact, a consistent host on the day, and a single standard for what a Leonida Tours experience means.
• One standard, checked. Every partner is visited, insured, documented and rated by us. If a route stops hitting the standard we stop selling it, and we will tell you why rather than quietly swap it out.
• A Leonida host is always there. Even when a partner drives, a Leonida host travels with the tour, and what that host does does not change from one route to the next.

That is the whole model: the local operators who know the route best, and a hospitality team that makes the day feel effortless from the first message to the last one.

Running every day of the year, from November 2026

Tours start on 19 November 2026 and run every day after that. There is no off-season here. The city tours run daily with a daytime, an afternoon and a sunset-and-night departure, the boat sails on its own timetable, and the Everglades and Florida Keys trips run on set days each week with private departures on request.

• Miami city tour: daily, with day and sunset departures, all year round.
• Biscayne Bay boat tour: daily at 11am, 4pm and sunset.
• Everglades airboat and Keys day trip: set days each week, private departures any day on request.
• Private tours: any day, any time, with the route built around what you want to see.

What a Leonida Tours tour actually is

• A small group. Twelve passengers maximum on the city tour, so you can hear the guide and you can ask questions.
• Licensed operators. Every route is run by a licensed Florida tour operator, and every vehicle and boat on it is insured and documented.
• A local host. Every tour is led by someone who lives here. Our hosts are not script-readers, and the one who has driven the Everglades route longest has done it for over a decade.
• An honest answer when we do not know. If you ask us which bar is best on a Tuesday, we will tell you which one is best on a Tuesday rather than the one that pays us more.

Pickup, wherever you are staying

We pick up across the greater Miami area: South Beach, Brickell, Downtown Miami, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Key Biscayne, Hialeah, Doral, Aventura and the hotels along the strip. Your exact pickup point is not published on this site. It is sent with your booking, once we know where you are staying, how many of you there are and whether you have luggage with you.

• City tours: pickup included anywhere in the greater Miami area, at your hotel lobby, your building's kerb or the nearest landmark.
• Everglades and Keys: pickup included across the same area, on a short stop list so an early start still works.
• Private tours: your door, your driveway or your lobby. You choose when you book.
• Airport: available for groups. Send us your flight number and we will time the pickup to it.

Staying somewhere we have not heard of? Ask. We will tell you honestly whether we can collect you.

What is included

What is never included: tips, which are entirely at your discretion; and any alcohol, because most of these tours involve being on the water and we would rather you enjoyed it.

How we handle the weather

South Florida gets serious storms, and the rule is simple: if it is not safe, we do not go out. Boats do not leave the marina in a thunderstorm, and we cancel rather than run a reduced or delayed route.

• On the day: if we cancel, you get a full refund or a free move to another date, your choice.
• In advance: if there is a named storm watch, we will contact you the evening before so you can rearrange without losing your slot.
• The Everglades and the Keys: these run in more weather than the boat tours, because a car can wait out a shower, but they are also the two most likely to be delayed on the highway, so leave your afternoon free.

How we make money

We sell the tour you are on. We do not sell you a shopping stop, a timeshare pitch, a jewellery stop or a club entry. The guides are not commissioned on anything you buy afterwards, because they do not take you anywhere you would want to buy anything afterwards.

We also make a small amount from hotel and ticket affiliate links on this site, which are marked where they appear and which never change what we recommend. If a tour is worth recommending, we will recommend it whether or not anyone paid us.

Who owns the words on this site

We write everything ourselves and we do not use generated text for our guides, our location descriptions or our itineraries. Where we describe a game, a film or a television show, we use the names only to identify real places, and our editorial policy explains exactly how that works.

Get in touch

We do not publish a street address or a mailbox, and we would rather you did not have to hunt for one. Everything starts on our contact page: tell us your dates, your group size and where you are staying, and a person answers.

• Contact page: the one place to send an enquiry, a group booking or a correction.
• Phone and WhatsApp: +1 (305) 555-0148, for same-day questions.
• No address to visit: pickup points are shared after you book, not published.
• Tours run every day of the year, from 19 November 2026.