Cost of traveling to various Asian cities

October 31, 2006 11:40 AM

I need to estimate and compare the expense of a two-week business trip to the following cities: Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing.

My boss would like me to find out how much it cost for two people to travel on business to each of these cities for a two week period, but I haven't found anything on the internet that estimates and/or breaks down daily expenses in each of these cities. Can anyone help me out?

posted by nyu2 to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

You could look at travel guides for each city (perhaps in your local library?) to get an idea of the costs for business-class food, lodging and transportation. IIRC, my company-paid hotel in Shanghai (which is probably somewhat similar to Beijing in price) cost ~$40 a night, and my company-paid hotel in Hong Kong was something like $100 a night.
posted by fermion at 12:02 PM on October 31, 2006

The US government's foreign per diem rates would be a good baseline.

Hong Kong $392/day
Tokyo $350
Beijing $322

Obviously, one could spend significantly more or less depending on one's preferences and budget, but the published per diem rates are a decent yardstick for comparing cities.
posted by blue mustard at 12:11 PM on October 31, 2006

blue mustard's suggestion is excellent. I was in Kobe, Japan six years ago and noticed a large difference between the cost of restaurants targeting foreigners and those for the locals. While this is true for any large city the consequences can be great if you aren't fluent in the local language (like me). Fortunately, we had locals to take us around so we ate great at very reasonable prices. If you will have access to a similiar set of people at each of your destinations then you could conceivably eat for a whole lot less than you expect.
posted by mmascolino at 1:19 PM on October 31, 2006

Go to a travel agent.

But, unless you're willing to be an egregious prick, don't do this without the intent to book with the travel agent once a decent price is found. They usually make their money from actually booking people on trips, so wasting an hour or two of their time isn't the nicest thing to do...
posted by The God Complex at 2:36 PM on October 31, 2006

Certainly Tokyo can be done much cheaper than that per diem, so I assume the same is true of the other cities. A business hotel such as the Toyoko Inn chain (http://www.toyoko-inn.com/eng/) is perfectly decent and will be about $70/night even in central Tokyo. $150 a day and you could live large.
posted by slipperynirvana at 9:18 PM on November 1, 2006