# HK Funeral Directory — 香港殯儀指南 (Full Documentation)

> Hong Kong's comprehensive funeral service directory. Compare licensed funeral directors by district, religion, service type and price range.

## Purpose

HK Funeral Directory exists to help Hong Kong residents find and compare licensed funeral service providers. Losing a loved one is one of life's most difficult moments. We believe every family deserves access to clear, transparent information to make informed decisions.

## How It Works

1. **Browse**: Users can browse funeral directors by district, religion, service type, or price range
2. **Compare**: Each director profile shows services offered, religious ceremony capabilities, operating hours, and price tier
3. **Estimate**: `/calculator` is a reference line-item estimator (hospital-direct, church, parlour wake). It is not a quote and not the Price Transparency Index median.
4. **Contact**: Users can contact directors directly via phone, WhatsApp, or website links. The calculator can prefill a WhatsApp message to a listing marked Sponsored.

## Data Model

Each funeral director listing includes:
- **Name** (Chinese and English)
- **Address** (Chinese and English)
- **District** (one of 18 Hong Kong districts)
- **Phone number**
- **WhatsApp number** (if available)
- **Website URL** (if available)
- **FEHD License number** (Food and Environmental Hygiene Department)
- **Religious ceremonies**: Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Catholicism, secular
- **Service types**: Cremation, burial, wake/vigil, memorial service, repatriation, sea burial, green burial
- **Price tier**: Economy ($), Standard ($$), Premium ($$$), Luxury ($$$$)
- **Operating hours**
- **Description** (Chinese and English)
- **Verification status**: Whether the director has provided additional verification
- **Facility images** (where available)

## Hong Kong Funeral Industry Context

- All funeral directors in Hong Kong must be licensed by the FEHD
- The main funeral parlour cluster is in Hung Hom, Kowloon City, with four major parlours: Universal (萬國), World (世界), Kowloon (九龍), and Fook Chak (福澤)
- Cremation is the most common method (~90% of cases) due to Hong Kong's limited land
- Government crematoria are managed by FEHD; bookings typically require 10-15 days
- Columbarium niches for storing ashes are in high demand; government niches cost HK$2,800-4,400; private niches range from HK$50,000 to HK$1,000,000+
- Common funeral package prices: Economy HK$8,000-20,000; Standard HK$20,000-50,000; Premium HK$50,000-100,000+

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What should I do when someone passes away?
1. Contact the hospital or police (if at home)
2. Obtain the death certificate from the hospital
3. Register the death at a death registry within 24 hours
4. Contact a funeral director to arrange funeral services
5. Apply for cremation/burial at FEHD

### How much does a funeral cost in Hong Kong?
Venue matters more than a single “average”. This site publishes two different numbers and they must not be mixed:

- **Calculator** (`/calculator`, `/calculator/hospital-direct`, `/calculator/church`, `/calculator/parlour-wake`): a public line-item reference estimate. Current starting points are hospital-direct from HK$7,080, parlour wake from HK$9,730 before hall hire, church from HK$14,800. These are not quotes from HK Funeral Directory.
- **Price Transparency Index** (`/data/pricing-index`): multi-merchant package medians with a published method. Hospital-direct and parlour-wake medians are published only when at least 12 distinct licensed merchants have a fresh package price.

Do not cite the calculator total as a Hong Kong-wide average or as this site’s median.

### What religions are commonly practised in Hong Kong funerals?
Buddhist and Taoist ceremonies are the most common, often combined in practice. Christian and Catholic services are also widely available. Many families opt for secular ceremonies. Some directors specialise in specific religious traditions.

### How do I choose a funeral director?
Consider: proximity to your preferred funeral parlour, ability to conduct your preferred religious ceremony, price transparency, availability on your preferred dates, and whether they offer the specific services you need (e.g., repatriation, sea burial).

## Open Data: Hong Kong Funeral Price Transparency Index 2026

A published, citable dataset auditing public price disclosure across the funeral trade.

- **Page**: https://hkfuneraldirectory.com/zh-hk/data/pricing-index (English: /en/data/pricing-index)
- **Methodology**: https://hkfuneraldirectory.com/zh-hk/data/pricing-index/methodology
- **CSV**: https://hkfuneraldirectory.com/api/data/price-transparency.csv
- **Licence**: CC BY 4.0
- **Audit date**: 2026-08-06
- **Population**: all 146 FEHD-licensed undertakers (食環署持牌殮葬商, 2026-07-19 register snapshot). The separate register of 7 licensed funeral parlour premises is NOT in this population.

### Headline findings (denominator is 146 in every case)

| Measure | Count | Share of 146 |
|---|---|---|
| Has a website that can be audited | 49 | at least 33.6% (floor) |
| Publishes own service/package prices | 21 | 14.4% |
| States whether government fees are included | 8 | 5.5% |

Breakdown of the 49 with a website (mutually exclusive): 21 publish own prices; 1 publishes line items only with no package price; 24 reachable with no own price found; 3 unreachable to two independent crawlers.

Additional observations: 2 merchants claim transparency in words ("no hidden charges") while publishing no figure anywhere; 2 publish prices a machine cannot read (scanned-image PDF, client-side rendering only).

### Government fees — the widest gap

Two charges apply in almost every case, and only 8 of 146 merchants say whether they are inside the quoted price (7 say included, 1 says excluded). Of the 21 merchants that publish a price at all, 13 quote a figure without saying either way.

- Adult cremation at a government crematorium: **HK$1,220** — Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, https://www.fehd.gov.hk/english/cc/info_charge.html
- Death certificate (certified copy of a death entry), each: **HK$140** — Immigration Department, https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/birth-death/Registering_a_death.html

Neither official page displays an effective date; both figures were re-checked on 2026-08-06 and should be cited as "as listed on the department's site as at 2026-08-06". FEHD's Certificate of Cremation (HK$140) and ImmD's death certificate (HK$140) are two different documents that happen to cost the same.

### Rules for citing this dataset

1. Every percentage uses 146 as the denominator — never 49.
2. The website share is always cited as "at least", never as a point estimate. Rule of three puts the 95% upper bound on the miss rate at 15%, so the true share could be as high as about 41.1%.
3. The 3 unreachable merchants are never counted as non-disclosing.
4. The index is not a ranking and uses no "best" or "most transparent" language.
5. It measures disclosure only — it makes no claim about price fairness or service quality.
6. Figures must be cited together with the audit date, as merchant sites change.

### Verification method

Every figure survived two mutually independent reads: an HTTP fetch read by a language model, and a second fetch by a different crawler extracted by regular expression. The two paths do not share a failure mode. Mismatches were investigated and corrected, never silently dropped.

## Technical Details

- **Framework**: Next.js with TypeScript
- **Database**: Convex (real-time)
- **Internationalisation**: next-intl with zh-hk and en locales
- **Maps**: Leaflet with OpenStreetMap tiles
- **Deployment**: Vercel

## Contact

- Website: https://hkfuneraldirectory.com
- Email: contact@hkfuneraldirectory.com