The Philippine Peso Just Hit Its 25th Record Low of 2026 — Here's What It's Worth to a Hong Kong Traveller
September 17, 2026
The Philippine peso closed at ₱62.86 to the US dollar on Monday — its sixth record low this September alone, and its 25th of the year. It's now down 8.3% since late February, squeezed by surging oil prices and, this week, a US Federal Reserve rate hike that gave the dollar one more reason to strengthen against it. Manila's central bank has watched the run largely from the sidelines. For a Hong Kong traveller, none of that is bad news: the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar, so every centavo the peso loses to the greenback, it loses to your HKD too, automatically.
What HK$1 buys today
Run the peg through and HK$1 currently converts to roughly ₱8.06 — a level the peso hasn't traded anywhere near in recent years. Compare that to full-year averages: 2022 averaged ₱6.99 per HKD, 2023 averaged ₱7.13, 2024 averaged ₱7.35, and 2025 averaged ₱7.36. Today's ₱8.06 sits comfortably above every one of those, meaning your Hong Kong dollar is buying noticeably more peso than it has at any point in the last four years.
Putting a number on it
Take a realistic discretionary budget for a 5-night Cebu or Palawan trip — hotels, meals, island-hopping or diving day trips, and local transport, excluding flights — at ₱25,000. Converted at the 2022 average rate, that trip cost HK$3,577. At this week's rate, it's HK$3,101. That's HK$476 saved on identical peso-denominated spending, purely from where the currency sits — about 13.3% cheaper than three years ago, and still roughly 8.7% cheaper than 2025's already-soft average.
The catch: it's oil, not just the Fed
The same story that's weakening the peso is also pushing up jet fuel costs, and Philippine carriers pass that through as fuel surcharges on tickets — so the flight half of the trip isn't getting cheaper alongside the destination half. That's real, but it's a one-time hit on the fare, not something that compounds. On a multi-night stay, the accumulated savings on hotels, meals, and tours from a peso trading 13% richer than 2022 outweigh a single surcharge bump on the ticket.
Is the window durable?
Philippine officials have pointed to strained public finances and a widening trade deficit as the structural drivers, not a one-off shock, and the Fed's own dot plot signals at least one more hike this year — both point to the dollar staying firm for a while yet, which means the peso staying weak against it. That's not a reason to rush a booking that wasn't already on your list, but if the Philippines already was, this is a reasonable week to lock in flights and hotels at today's numbers. See exactly where the Philippines sits against its own recent history on its destination page, and for how we weigh currency swings like this one into a single number, our methodology lays it out.