Top 10 Most Expensive Cities in The World 2011

This is an update post to the Top 5 Most Expensive Cities In The World 2009. I dropped the last year’s listing when I realised the survey of the cost of living conducted by Mercer is actually aimed for those expatriates working and living in that city who are earning money and buying properties there, with reference to the city of New York, USA. It doesn’t reflect solely on the cost of hotels, transportation and foods for short term traveling. Therefore the result has less relevance to the cost of traveling there. For example, Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia ranked 104 this year while Bangkok ranked 88 and Beijing is 20th most expensive city in the world, but this ranking is for expatriates who wish to buy houses there. For travelers, we don’t buy properties in travel destinations. We spent most of our money in foods, transports and hotels. In actual facts, traveling to Beijing could be cheaper than Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur! Anyway, the ranking could still be a general guidelines on the cost of living in a country, especially for foreigners. So please read on, fellow travelers…

For those who doesn’t know about Mercer’s Cost Of Living Survey, the survey measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. It is the world’s most comprehensive cost of living survey and is used to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees, not travelers.

According to Mercer’s 2011 Cost Of Living Survey released last month, Luanda of Angola, and N’Djamena of Chad, both African cities, out of my expectation, ranked 1st and 3rd on the list! This again mainly due to the high cost of finding houses for expatriates, though Republic of Chad is one of the poorest country in the world. Otherwise, the cost to travel to the rest of the top 10 cities seems to be as high. Japan, Switzerland, and Singapore are best known for their high visiting cost for tourists from around the world.

Here I list out not the top 5 but Top 10 Most Expensive Cities In The World:-

1. Luanda, Republic of Angola
2. Tokyo, Japan
3. N’Djamena, Republic of Chad
4. Moscow, Russia
5. Geneva, Switzerland
6. Osaka, Japan
7. Zurich, Switzerland
8. Singapore
9. Hong Kong
10. Sao Paulo, Brazil

It is still the vision of Travel Feeder to feed travel tips to travelers around the world so travelers could visit their dream cities with the least budget and highest value, even to the most expensive cities in the world. How many of these cities have you conquered with least budget and greatest pleasure? I would be glad to hear your experience by commenting this post. For me, I will conquer the 2nd most expensive city in the world, Tokyo next year… 🙂 – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.