VacationSelector

Hong Kong or Washington DC?

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.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration 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 KongWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Hong Kong leads by 69 points.69
Hong KongWashington DC
Score8718
Swim season months83
Beaches 10 km651
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Hong Kong leads by 11 points.11
Hong KongWashington DC
Score8877
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4,3251,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3236
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 19 points.19
Hong KongWashington DC
Score3655
Museums within 10 km5083
Museums within 2 km of centre1755
Share of museums within 2 km %3466
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Hong Kong leads by 10 points.10
Hong KongWashington DC
Score7161
Drinking venues within 4 km1,9481,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,154593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5958
Nightclubs within 4 km3754
Nature & day trips. Hong Kong leads by 22 points.22
Hong KongWashington DC
Score6442
Protected land share 50 km %810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %2994
Park area within 2 km52 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Hong Kong leads by 20 points.20
Hong KongWashington DC
Score5838
Tourist attractions within 2 km277
Park area within 2 km52 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km51
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
Hong KongWashington DC
Score6976
Notable places within 2 km204305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Hong Kong leads by 20 points.20
Hong KongWashington DC
Score6343
Price level global72100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Hong Kong leads by 12 points.12
Hong KongWashington DC
Score7462
Monthly daytime high19.4 °C to 31.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 493 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months40
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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Hong Kong
20
20
21
23
26
28
29
29
28
27
24
21
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Hong Kong
23
39
70
144
280
493
381
453
331
92
36
31
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Hong Kong
11
11
12
13
13
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
Washington DC
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
Washington DC
No sunshine record

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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromHong KongWashington DC
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 5 m
€168-188
HKG · 25 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 5 m
€279-371
HKG · 25 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
15 h 55 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
14 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
3 h 0 m
€127-156
HKG · 25 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
15 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
12 h 55 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 0 m
€570-666
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
€472-535
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
17 h 15 m
no fares
SZX · 54 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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 KongWashington DC
Official languageStandard Chinese
CurrencyHong Kong Dollar (HKD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsG220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number999911
Elevation7 m72 m
Main airportHong Kong International Airport (HKG)25 km from centre151 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureHong KongWashington DC
City population7,413,070689,545
People per km²3,896
Museums within 10 km3999
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre7682
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 Washington DC 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.