A global price survey by Deutsche Bank Research set the average price for a two-night holiday in Kuala Lumpur with a stay at a five-star hotel at US$480.20. ― Picture by Yusof Mat IsaKUALA LUMPUR, April 15 — Malaysia ranks as the cheapest country to have a high-end weekend getaway, costing tourists less than half of what they would pay in Singapore, a survey has shown.
The global price survey by Deutsche Bank Research titled “The Random Walk: Mapping the World’s Prices 2015” set the average price for a two-night holiday in Kuala Lumpur with a stay at a five-star hotel at US$480.20 (RM1,775.54), which includes the cost of four meals, two snacks, car rental for two days, two pints of beer, four litres of soft drinks or water and some shopping on the side.
It is also lower than the average price of US$541.80 for a similar stay in Kuala Lumpur last year, when the Malaysian capital lost out to Mumbai as the cheapest luxury destination in 2014 with a weekend rate of US$505.60.
Mumbai’s 2015 average went up slightly to US$507.70, placing it a close second to Kuala Lumpur, according to the Deutsche Bank Research survey published yesterday.
The cost of a weekend luxury stay in Singapore, meanwhile, worked out to US$1,126.90, making it more expensive to visit compared to Melbourne (US$943.90), Berlin (US$1,117.70), Hong Kong (US$1,079), Cape Town (US$1,050.10) and San Francisco (US$1,087.40), among other cities.
The most expensive city to visit, however, is Sydney, where it is estimated to cost US$2,164 for a luxury weekend holiday.
The figure trumps London, which will cost US$1,748.50 for a weekend visit, and Paris where a weekend of five-star treatment will set you back US$1,530.90.
Kuala Lumpur is also one of the cheaper cities to have a “cheap date”, with the price averaging at around US$34.40 and is not too far off from Mumbai, which is the cheapest place to have a date at an average cost of US$24.70.
The survey defines a cheap date as inclusive of cab fares, McDonald’s burgers, soft drinks, two movie tickets and a couple of beers.
The average cost of a date in Singapore is around US$62.80, while the most expensive city for couples to have a night out is San Francisco at an average cost of US$104.60 followed by Tokyo (US$103.50).
Likewise for a packet of Marlboro cigarettes, Malaysia ranks in the lower half of cities surveyed with smokers in Kuala Lumpur spending US$3.50 on every purchase.
The cheapest smokes are currently sold in Moscow (US$1.35) followed closely by Manila (US$1.36), while the most expensive are sold in Melbourne (US$18.45).
Also considered cheap in Kuala Lumpur are movie tickets, which will cost cinemagoers US$4.04 per ticket. The cheapest place to catch a movie is again Mumbai (US$3.80), while watching the silver screen in Melbourne will cost you US$14.61, the most expensive of all the cities surveyed.
Deutsche Bank Research noted that while price trends over its three previous surveys have not changed much, such as in the case of Australia being consistently the world’s most expensive country, the gap in prices between countries has narrowed as an effect of exchange rate movements.
