Hong Kong has topped a survey on the safest cities for travelers, beating Singapore and cities in Japan.
Backgroundchecks.org describing Hong Kong as a place “where a woman or man can walk on any street at any time of day or night without fear”, and it enjoys the lowest crime rate compared to cities in Japan and Singapore, Oriental Daily reported.
Hong Kong does not have an authoritarian government like Singapore or the risks of a natural disaster like Japan, thus, the agency concluded that Hong Kong was the safest place for tourists.
The main drawback of Hong Kong was its vulnerability to disease epidemics, as in the SARS scare in 2003, the report said, because of its humid subtropical climate and high population density.
The city’s proximity to Guangdong province in mainland China – which authors of the report described as a place “where people eat anything that has four legs that isn’t a table and everything that flies that isn’t an airplane” – increased the likelihood of a virus transferring from animals to humans.
The survey agency ranked 121 cities and countries based on their crime rates, government travel advisories, the potential for natural disasters, and the competitiveness and sustainability of each country’s tourist industry to find out which places were the safest and the most dangerous, Sing Pao reported.
Honduras, a Central American nation ranked as the most dangerous travel destination, as it has one of the worst homicide rates in the world.