VacationSelector

Alicante or Marseille?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Alicante
56
match

Wins on year-round weather and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Marseille
57
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AlicanteMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 10 points.10
AlicanteMarseille
Score7767
Swim season months52
Beaches 10 km3364
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 9 points.9
AlicanteMarseille
Score6675
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8671,320
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3139
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
AlicanteMarseille
Score4250
Museums within 10 km1433
Museums within 2 km of centre1123
Share of museums within 2 km %7970
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteMarseille
Score5148
Drinking venues within 4 km591544
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488454
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8383
Nightclubs within 4 km5430
Nature & day trips. Alicante leads by 3 points.3
AlicanteMarseille
Score4037
Protected land share 50 km %715
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %5956
Park area within 2 km60 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Marseille leads by 2 points.2
AlicanteMarseille
Score4244
Tourist attractions within 2 km1317
Park area within 2 km60 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km14
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 32 points.32
AlicanteMarseille
Score2658
Notable places within 2 km18111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 9 points.9
AlicanteMarseille
Score7162
Price level global60.873.7
Daily budget€122€160
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 12 points.12
AlicanteMarseille
Score8775
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months116
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteMarseille
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAlicanteMarseille
Official languageSpanishFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation3 m0 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteMarseille
City population366,221886,040
People per km²1,8193,683
Museums within 10 km827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre5293
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Marseille somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.