VacationSelector

Hong Kong or Istanbul?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Hong Kong
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Istanbul
65
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

Hong KongIstanbul
Beaches & swimming. Hong Kong leads by 44 points.44
Hong KongIstanbul
Score8743
Swim season months83
Beaches 10 km652
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Hong Kong leads by 18 points.18
Hong KongIstanbul
Score8870
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,3252,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3220
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 30 points.30
Hong KongIstanbul
Score3666
Museums within 10 km50145
Museums within 2 km of centre1771
Share of museums within 2 km %3449
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 8 points.8
Hong KongIstanbul
Score7179
Drinking venues within 4 km1,9482,266
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1541,176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5952
Nightclubs within 4 km37221
Nature & day trips. Hong Kong leads by 39 points.39
Hong KongIstanbul
Score6425
Protected land share 50 km %81
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %2948
Park area within 2 km52 hectares60 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 9 points.9
Hong KongIstanbul
Score5867
Tourist attractions within 2 km2768
Park area within 2 km52 hectares60 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km52
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 6 points.6
Hong KongIstanbul
Score6975
Notable places within 2 km204285
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 26 points.26
Hong KongIstanbul
Score6389
Price level global7235.2
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Hong Kong leads by 5 points.5
Hong KongIstanbul
Score7469
Monthly daytime high19.4 °C to 31.3 °C9.2 °C to 29.7 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 493 mm23 mm to 101 mm
Dry months44
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Hong Kong
19
20
22
26
29
30
31
31
31
28
25
21
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Hong Kong
20
20
21
23
26
28
29
29
28
27
24
21
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Rainfall, mm
Hong Kong
23
39
70
144
280
493
381
453
331
92
36
31
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Daylight, hours per day
Hong Kong
11
11
12
13
13
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Hong Kong
5
3
3
4
5
5
7
6
6
6
6
5
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Hong Kong: 1991-2020 normals, King's Park (4.4 km from centre). Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHong KongIstanbul
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 5 m
€168-188
HKG · 25 km
10 h 0 m
€533-647
IST · 36 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
2 h 40 m
€170-184
HKG · 25 km
9 h 30 m
€507-517
1 stop
IST · 36 km
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 5 m
€279-371
HKG · 25 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 0 m
€570-666
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€147-156
HKG · 25 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
MoscowVKO, SVO, DME, ZIA
9 h 5 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
2 h 40 m
€215-235
IST · 36 km
TehranIKA, THR
7 h 55 m
no fares
SZX · 54 km
3 h 5 m
€261-292
IST · 36 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
€472-535
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
4 h 15 m
€177-220
IST · 36 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
15 h 55 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
17 h 15 m
no fares
SZX · 54 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IST · 36 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-09 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureHong KongIstanbul
Official languageStandard ChineseTurkish
CurrencyHong Kong Dollar (HKD)Turkish Lira (TRY)
SocketsG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+3
Emergency number999112
Elevation7 m100 m
Main airportHong Kong International Airport (HKG)25 km from centre151 non-stop destinationsİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureHong KongIstanbul
City population7,413,07015,655,924
People per km²2,930
Museums within 10 km3972
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre7662
Swim season, months above 21 °C8 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Hong Kong or Istanbul somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.