Cheap flights: Hong Kong to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand – year-round bargains according to the data

Travel search engines love to tell you that you have found a great price, but often that is just a sales tactic to get you to pay up. How can travellers truly judge if an airfare is a real bargain or not?

By looking at its booking details for the last two years, flight search engine Skyscanner has established the best prices to popular destinations from Hong Kong.

It was a dizzying task. Hong Kong International Airport hosts flights to 220 destinations worldwide from more than 120 airlines. This abundant choice makes it tricky for travellers to know how good a price really is when booking flights.

“Our [earlier] Hong Kong Traveller Report revealed that 46 per cent of Hong Kong travellers see price as the biggest consideration for them in their trip planning,” says Patrick Yip, growth manager (Hong Kong and Taiwan) at Skyscanner. “This means they tend to book a trip only when they see good deals.”

The 2019 Skyscanner Fly Smart Index reveals that the cheapest places to fly to from Hong Kong are Seoul in South Korea, Kagoshima in Japan, Taichung in Taiwan, and Chiang Rai in Thailand. The biggest price drops in the past two years are on fares to Seoul, and Chiang Rai and Phuket in Thailand. For Koh Samui, Fukuoka and Tainan, fares do not vary much at all.

The most expensive places to travel to from Hong Kong are, by quite some distance, Sapporo in Japan and Koh Samui in Thailand. Meanwhile, over the last two years there have been big fare hikes in flights to Chiang Rai, Sapporo, Tainan, Tokyo, Kaohsiung, Bangkok and Osaka.

So how do you get the best possible price?

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“Travellers should spare some time for trip research, whether it is comparing the airfares from different airlines, or discussing with other travellers on online forums,” Yip says.

He suggests setting up price alerts on Skyscanner and using its “cheapest month to fly” feature, while also looking at historical data to more easily work out the best time to both book and fly to a destination. “Be flexible about the travel dates,” he adds.

For those who prefer to avoid low cost carriers (LCC) and instead travel full service airlines (FSA), the research contains some interesting trends. The largest price gap between the two types of airline for fares from Hong Kong is to Chiang Mai, Tokyo, Phuket and Fukuoka. Fly to those on a full service airline and you will pay over 70 per cent more.

At the other end of the scale, fares to Busan, Bangkok, Kagoshima, Seoul and Taichung are only between 22 per cent and 46 per cent more expensive.

“There were occasions during 2017 and 2018 where FSA offered round-trip flight tickets to Seoul at only HK$1,110 – just around HK$200 more than the cheapest airfare via LCC,” Yip says.

Flights to Seoul on a full service airline are generally pretty price friendly, he admits, with no significant difference to low cost carriers.

The cheapest places to fly to from Hong Kong

For the sake of simplicity, we are showing the average prices (and in brackets, the lowest possible price), regardless of the type of airline.

To Japan

1. Kagoshima HK$1,540 (HK$883)

2. Fukuoka HK$1,860 (HK$660)

3. Osaka HK$1,900 (HK$920)

4. Tokyo HK$2,040 (HK$930)

5. Okinawa HK$2,120 (HK$960)

6. Nagoya HK$2,130 (HK$980)

7. Sapporo HK$4,530 (HK$1,860)

To South Korea

1. Seoul HK$1,530 (HK$840)

2. Jeju HK$1,620 (HK$780)

3. Busan HK$1,880 (HK$830)

To Taiwan

1. Taichung HK$1,060 (HK$560)

2. Tainan HK$1,410 (HK$1,100)

3. Taipei HK$1,430 (HK$1,000)

4. Kaohsiung HK$1,480 (HK$790)

To Thailand

1. Chiang Rai HK$1,180 (HK$620)

2. Chiang Mai HK$1,500 (HK$740)

3. Bangkok HK$1,550 (HK$950)

3. Phuket HK$1,550 (HK$660)

5. Koh Samui HK$4,100 (HK$3,000)

Source: 2019 Skyscanner Fly Smart Index