VacationSelector

New York or Hong Kong?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

New York
66
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nightlife with your weighting.

Hong Kong
68
match

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

What matters to you?

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

The verdict

Choose Hong Kong if you want the sea in daily reach: 65 beaches nearby, and water warm enough to swim for much of the year, with protected hill country close to the city for days out.

Choose New York if museums and late nights matter more, with 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, a deeper drinking and club scene, and more attractions and parkland for children.

Scoreboard

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

New YorkHong Kong
Beaches & swimming. Hong Kong leads by 23 points.23
New YorkHong Kong
Score6487
Swim season months38
Beaches 10 km1765
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 7 points.7
New YorkHong Kong
Score9588
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,0324,325
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3832
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 24 points.24
New YorkHong Kong
Score6036
Museums within 10 km11950
Museums within 2 km of centre3117
Share of museums within 2 km %2634
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. New York leads by 18 points.18
New YorkHong Kong
Score8971
Drinking venues within 4 km4,1591,948
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,0151,154
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4859
Nightclubs within 4 km19237
Nature & day trips. Hong Kong leads by 25 points.25
New YorkHong Kong
Score3964
Protected land share 50 km %48
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %6929
Park area within 2 km134 hectares52 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 14 points.14
New YorkHong Kong
Score7258
Tourist attractions within 2 km3727
Park area within 2 km134 hectares52 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km75
Sights concentration. New York leads by 5 points.5
New YorkHong Kong
Score7469
Notable places within 2 km268204
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Hong Kong leads by 20 points.20
New YorkHong Kong
Score4363
Price level global10072
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Hong Kong leads by 16 points.16
New YorkHong Kong
Score5874
Monthly daytime high4.5 °C to 30.1 °C19.4 °C to 31.3 °C
Monthly rainfall74 mm to 112 mm23 mm to 493 mm
Dry months04
0255075100

Where they differ

Hong Kong has 65 beaches nearby against New York's 17, with the sea at the centre itself, and water at 21°C or more for 8 months of the year against 3. Twice the share of protected land surrounds it, so the countryside is the day trip.

New York has about twice as many museums as Hong Kong, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach where Hong Kong has none. Its green space is city parkland rather than open country, about three times as much near the centre.

Where they are alike

Both put a great deal within walking distance of the centre: a dense core of notable places, with New York holding somewhat more of them. Neither asks you to travel far to see the main things.

The same goes for eating and for children. Restaurants cluster near the centre in both, New York with a somewhat wider range of kitchens. Both have theme parks within reach, 7 for New York and 5 for Hong Kong, and attractions nearby.

Which traveller are you?

If you swim, walk or want water at the end of the day, Hong Kong: the sea begins at the centre, 65 beaches sit within reach, and the surrounding hills hold twice New York's share of protected land.

If your trip is galleries by day and bars afterwards, New York: roughly double the museums, UNESCO-listed sites in day-trip range, and many times the number of nightclubs.

Families lean to New York too, with more attractions near the centre, considerably more park space nearby, and 7 theme parks within reach against Hong Kong's 5.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries no daily budget for either city, so nothing on this page tells you which trip costs more, and the value figure rests on a different measure entirely. Treat it as unrelated to prices.

The sunshine figure is missing for New York, unmeasured rather than low, so that side of the weather comparison is blank and its monthly picture rests on temperature, rain and sea alone. And Hong Kong's beach advantage sits partly in months you may not want: the sea is warmest from June to September, when rain runs 331-493mm a month.

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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Hong Kong
19
20
22
26
29
30
31
31
31
28
25
21
Sea temperature, °C
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Hong Kong
20
20
21
23
26
28
29
29
28
27
24
21
Rainfall, mm
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Hong Kong
23
39
70
144
280
493
381
453
331
92
36
31
Daylight, hours per day
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Hong Kong
11
11
12
13
13
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
New York
No sunshine record
Hong Kong
5
3
3
4
5
5
7
6
6
6
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre). Hong Kong: 1991-2020 normals, King's Park (4.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Hong Kong is best from October to December: highs easing from 28°C to 21°C, rain dropping to 36mm by late autumn, and the sea still warm enough to swim. Midsummer is the problem, with 331-493mm of rain a month from June to September.

New York suits May to September, with highs of 22-27°C at either end of that run and the peak in high summer. Rain is spread evenly, near 100mm most months, so it rarely picks the date for you; January highs of 5°C rule winter out.

Getting there

Flying fromNew YorkHong Kong
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
4 h 5 m
€279-371
HKG · 25 km
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 45 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
3 h 5 m
€168-188
HKG · 25 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 20 m
€314-354
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
13 h 35 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
3 h 0 m
€127-156
HKG · 25 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
15 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
11 h 55 m
€586-713
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
12 h 0 m
€570-666
1 stop
HKG · 25 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 0 m
€193-222
JFK · 21 km
15 h 45 m
no fares
HKG · 25 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 40 m
€374-446
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
17 h 15 m
no fares
SZX · 54 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
11 h 25 m
€622-836
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SZX · 54 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 2026-08 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

MeasureNew YorkHong Kong
Official language–Standard Chinese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number911999
Elevation25 m7 m
Main airportJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinationsHong Kong International Airport (HKG)25 km from centre151 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days17 days

By the numbers

MeasureNew YorkHong Kong
City population8,804,1907,413,070
People per km²7,256–
Museums within 10 km15739
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre13276
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow New York or Hong Kong 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.