VacationSelector

Hong Kong or Seoul?

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.

Seoul
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families 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 KongSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Hong Kong leads by 72 points.72
Hong KongSeoul
Score8715
Swim season months82
Beaches 10 km651
Coast distance0 km28 km
Water distance0 km28 km
Places to eat. Hong Kong leads by 3 points.3
Hong KongSeoul
Score8885
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,3253,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3232
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 47 points.47
Hong KongSeoul
Score3683
Museums within 10 km50203
Museums within 2 km of centre1790
Share of museums within 2 km %3444
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 9 points.9
Hong KongSeoul
Score7180
Drinking venues within 4 km1,9483,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,1541,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5950
Nightclubs within 4 km3729
Nature & day trips. Hong Kong leads by 32 points.32
Hong KongSeoul
Score6432
Protected land share 50 km %81
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %2995
Park area within 2 km52 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 21 points.21
Hong KongSeoul
Score5879
Tourist attractions within 2 km2762
Park area within 2 km52 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km58
Sights concentration. Hong Kong leads by 10 points.10
Hong KongSeoul
Score6959
Notable places within 2 km204118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 9 points.9
Hong KongSeoul
Score6372
Price level global7259.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Hong Kong leads by 13 points.13
Hong KongSeoul
Score7461
Monthly daytime high19.4 °C to 31.3 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 493 mm18 mm to 422 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
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Hong Kong
20
20
21
23
26
28
29
29
28
27
24
21
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Hong Kong
23
39
70
144
280
493
381
453
331
92
36
31
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Hong Kong
11
11
12
13
13
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Hong Kong
5
3
3
4
5
5
7
6
6
6
6
5
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5

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). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHong KongSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 5 m
€279-371
HKG · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
3 h 35 m
€209-232
HKG · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 10 m
€147-156
HKG · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
2 h 40 m
€170-184
HKG · 25 km
5 h 0 m
€176-202
ICN · 49 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
3 h 0 m
€127-156
HKG · 25 km
1 h 45 m
€198-221
ICN · 49 km
FukuokaFUK
3 h 5 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
12 h 0 m
€637-697
ICN · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
€630-670
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
€472-535
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
17 h 15 m
no fares
SZX · 54 km
14 h 55 m
€1,052-1072
2 stops
ICN · 49 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 KongSeoul
Official languageStandard ChineseKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyHong Kong Dollar (HKD)Won (KRW)
SocketsG220 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+9
Emergency number999Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation7 m38 m
Main airportHong Kong International Airport (HKG)25 km from centre151 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureHong KongSeoul
City population7,413,0709,668,465
People per km²15,973
Museums within 10 km3980
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre76156
Swim season, months above 21 °C8 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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