Posted on 20 March 2019

With the pound looking a little shaky, it's probably worthwhile avoiding the world's most expensive cities for a while.

Handily, the Economist Intelligence Unit has done the legwork for us and worked out the top 10 dearest metropolises in its yearly Worldwide Cost of Living report.

The downside of this useful study is... many of these cities are amazing destinations.

In 2019 three cities actually tied for first position: Singapore, Hong Kong and Paris.

Singapore was the only city to maintain its position from 2018's survey, but this year it was joined by the French capital and Hong Kong.

The Economist was pretty thorough in its methodology, analysing the cost of 160 items in 133 cities across the globe. While many items won't impact the regular holidaymaker - such as rent, gas and electric - the cost of food, including eating out, was factored in, as were recreational costs.

The Japanese city of Osaka rose six positions this year, occupying the fifth spot with Geneva, Switzerland.

The top 10 is largely split between Europe and Asia, but two American cities made it this year: New York, which bagged seventh position alongside Copenhagen, and Los Angeles scraped into 10th spot, next to the Israel's biggest city, Tel Aviv.

The impact globalisation is having on cost of living

Roxana Slavcheva, the editor of this year's study, said in a statement: "We note converging costs in traditionally more expensive cities like Paris, Singapore, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen and Hong Kong. It is a testament to globalization and the similarity of tastes and shopping patterns.

"More remarkable is the severe fall in the ranking of emerging economy cities — Istanbul, Tashkent, Moscow and St. Petersburg — owing to sustained high inflation and currency depreciation."

What about the UK?

This year London was the 22nd most costly city, rising eight positions on last year's study. The UK has been experiencing significant price rises in consumer goods and food. The only other UK city in the study was Manchester, which ranked 51^st alongside Adelaide, Lyon and Boston.

The cheapest city in the survey was the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, whose cost of living is slightly less than Damascus, Syria.

This year's top 10 looks like this:

1. Singapore (tie)

1. Paris (tie)

iStock/AlexKozlov

1. Hong Kong (tie)

4. Zurich, Switzerland

5. Geneva, Switzerland (tie)

5. Osaka, Japan (tie)

7. Seoul, South Korea (tie)

iStock/valentinrussanov

7. Copenhagen, Denmark (tie)

7. New York, New York (tie)

10. Tel Aviv, Israel (tie)

iStock/anouchka

10. Los Angeles, California (tie)

iStock/Sean Pavone

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