China · Guangdong
Plan your Shenzhen trip
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
01Your itinerary
02Where to stay
Futian CBD
Best for first visits, short trips, and anyone travelling on to Hong Kong by trainThe financial and civic centre, all glass towers, wide boulevards, department-store malls and the best metro connectivity in the city. Huaqiangbei is a few stops north and the Hong Kong high-speed rail leaves from directly underneath.
The Ritz-Carlton, Shenzhen
The reason to pay for altitude in Futian is the skyline view, and the towers here have it. Being on the metro spine also cuts twenty minutes off every day of a short trip.
€€€A serviced apartment near Gangxia or Shopping Park station
Better value than the tower hotels, with a kitchen and laundry, and a short walk to both Coco Park's restaurants and the Line 1 and 3 interchange.
€€Nanshan and OCT
Best for longer stays, design and architecture interest, and business travellers visiting tech companiesThe tech district: Tencent and DJI headquarters, Shenzhen University, and the OCT cultural pocket with its converted factory lofts, galleries and coffee bars. Greener and lower-rise than Futian, and noticeably younger.
A design hotel inside or beside the OCT-Loft complex
Puts you inside the one part of Shenzhen where the evening is walkable, with galleries, bookshops and bars on the same block rather than a mall ride away.
€€€A mid-range business hotel near Houhai station
Houhai is the heart of the tech cluster and ten minutes from Shenzhen Bay Park, which is the best morning run in the city.
€€Shekou
Best for slower trips, families, and anyone flying out of Hong Kong by boatWaterfront on the far southwest, built around Sea World plaza and the beached Minghua liner, with the city's longest-established international community, its best public architecture, and a ferry terminal serving Hong Kong airport and Macau.
A harbour-facing hotel near the Shekou cruise terminal
The ferry to Hong Kong International Airport leaves from the same complex and lets you skip Hong Kong immigration entirely when transiting.
€€€An apartment rental in the streets behind Sea World
Quiet, leafy and genuinely residential, with bakeries and small restaurants that are used to foreigners, ten minutes on foot from the plaza.
€€Luohu
Best for budget stays, tailoring, and overnight stops built around the Hong Kong borderThe 1980s core, denser and grittier than the newer districts, containing the Luohu border crossing to Hong Kong, Dongmen Pedestrian Street and the tailoring floors of Luohu Commercial City. The cheapest central beds in the city by some distance.
A tower hotel above Luohu station
You can be through the border and on a Hong Kong MTR train within fifteen minutes of leaving the lobby, which is the entire argument for staying here.
€€A small hotel near Dongmen Pedestrian Street
Dongmen is the liveliest street-level shopping and food in Shenzhen after dark, and rooms a lane back from it are cheap and perfectly decent.
€Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.
03Tickets & tours
Huaqiangbei electronics markets
Several city blocks of multi-storey markets in Futian holding the densest concentration of electronic components on earth: reels of resistors, camera…
Tip Start at SEG Plaza and work outward on foot. Go on a weekday morning when the wholesale floors are actually trading, and treat any complete branded device as a copy…
Ping An Finance Centre, Free Sky observation deck
The 599-metre tower that defines the Futian skyline, with an observation deck on the 116th floor that is among the highest publicly accessible…
Tip Book for late afternoon and stay through dusk. Air clarity is the whole game here, so check visibility that morning and switch days if it is hazy rather than paying for…
OCT-Loft
A 1980s electronics factory compound in Nanshan converted into a creative quarter of design studios, independent bookshops, galleries and serious…
Tip The north and south loft areas are separate and both worth doing; the south end is quieter and has the better cafes.
Nantou Ancient City
A walled settlement in Nanshan that served as the administrative seat for this whole coastal region, Hong Kong included, for roughly 1,700 years.
Tip The interest here is the layering: Ming gates, 1990s handshake buildings, and new design interventions on the same lane.
Window of the World
A theme park of scaled-down world monuments, opened in 1994, including a 108-metre Eiffel Tower you can ride to the top of.
Tip Only worth it if the historical strangeness appeals or you have children in tow. If you want an actual view of Shenzhen instead, spend the money at Ping An and the…
Lianhuashan Park
A wooded hill rising directly north of the CBD, topped by a striding bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping looking out over the skyline his policy created.
Tip Walk up around an hour before sunset. On weekends and holidays the tower light show usually runs after dark and this is the cheapest good seat for it.
Shenzhen Bay Park and Talent Park
Thirteen unbroken kilometres of waterfront promenade along the bay, looking straight across at the New Territories hills of Hong Kong, with cycle…
Tip Rent a bike near Talent Park and ride west toward the Shenzhen Bay bridge at golden hour.
Sea World and the Sea World Culture and Arts Center, Shekou
A plaza built around the Minghua, a retired French ocean liner deliberately run aground here in the 1980s and now full of restaurants and bars, next…
Tip Eat around the ship, then walk the promenade to the arts centre. The ferry terminal alongside runs direct boats to Hong Kong International Airport, useful if you are…
Day trips from Shenzhen
Hong Kong
Fifteen minutes from Futian station to West Kowloon on the high-speed line, or a twenty-minute walk-across at Luohu, Futian, Huanggang or Shenzhen…
Day tripGuangzhou
About thirty minutes by high-speed rail from Shenzhen North to Guangzhou South.
Day tripThe Dapeng Peninsula
Ninety minutes east by metro and bus, and a genuine surprise: clear-water beaches at Xichong and Yangmeikeng, coastal hiking, seafood restaurants on…
Day tripMacau and Zhuhai by ferry
Roughly an hour across the Pearl River estuary from Shekou cruise terminal. Macau gives you Portuguese colonial architecture and casinos in a…
Day tripEverything to do in Shenzhen
Skip-the-line tickets, guided tours and day trips, all in one place on Booking.com.
04Getting there & around
Getting around
The metro is the whole answer and it is superb. Shenzhen Metro opened in 2004 with a single line and now runs seventeen lines across roughly 570 kilometres of track, which makes it one of the largest urban rail systems ever built and by far the fastest-built.
Flights
Compare fares into Shenzhen and pick dates that suit the days you planned.
Airport transfers
Book a private or shared ride from the airport so the first evening starts at your door, not at a ticket queue.
Car hire from Shenzhen
Only worth it for day trips beyond the city — in town, the plan above works on foot and public transport.
Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.