Where is the best place for a cheap pint of beer?
Each year Deutsche Bank releases its “Mapping the world’s prices” report, which details global prices. One item used to indicate the cost of living in 50 major cities throughout the world is the cost of a pint of beer.
The challenge is finding a beer brand and style that can be used as a standard price comparison, a beer that’s common and widely available in each city. A popular national brand cannot be used as an international comparison if it is not globally available. One beer brand that can certainly be found in almost every city is Guinness. So, the cost of living in 50 major cities can be literally determined by the price of a pint of Guinness.
The prices used suggest a pint of Guinness in a pub, rather than a shop or supermarket.
The spread of cost of a pint of beer across the 50 major cities ranges from $1.50 (€1.30) in Manilla to $12.00 (€10.40) in Dubai.
However, the results ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Call me sceptical, but the report suggests the cost of a pint of Guinness in Tokyo could be as low as $5.00 (€4.30) — impossible, and seemingly less expensive than Athens! I believe a pint of Guinness or other international brand, to be at least $10.00 (€8.60) in Tokyo. Amsterdam, on the other hand, comes in at a respectable $6.10 (€5.30), which is about right.
Beer-lovers using the report as a gauge of where the best place would be to visit for a beer-weekend will not be surprised by the results, as the cost of a pint of beer in the UAE seems quite prohibitive. Norway, unfortunately, fares badly too with the second highest cost — way ahead of Hong Kong and Singapore, which take third and fourth places.
Most unsurprisingly is the cost of a pint of beer in Prague, which at $1.60 (€1.40) is only marginally more expensive than Manilla and ranks the second least expensive beer city in the world. That is hardly news to a hardcore beer fanatic.