VacationSelector

Alicante or Rotterdam?

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, 2 points apart

Alicante
56
match

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

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families 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.

AlicanteRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 40 points.40
AlicanteRotterdam
Score7737
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km3322
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
AlicanteRotterdam
Score6672
Restaurants within 2 km of centre867862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3146
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 18 points.18
AlicanteRotterdam
Score4260
Museums within 10 km1441
Museums within 2 km of centre1120
Share of museums within 2 km %7949
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Alicante leads by 2 points.2
AlicanteRotterdam
Score5149
Drinking venues within 4 km591542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8370
Nightclubs within 4 km5440
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
AlicanteRotterdam
Score4042
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5979
Park area within 2 km60 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 20 points.20
AlicanteRotterdam
Score4262
Tourist attractions within 2 km1327
Park area within 2 km60 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 25 points.25
AlicanteRotterdam
Score2651
Notable places within 2 km1874
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteRotterdam
Score7158
Price level global60.879.2
Daily budget€122€181
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 31 points.31
AlicanteRotterdam
Score8756
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months110
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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteRotterdam
ManchesterMAN
2 h 40 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 45 m
€98-122
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 15 m
€110-130
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 50 m
€96-151
ALC · 10 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
50 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
MarrakechRAK
1 h 50 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureAlicanteRotterdam
Official languageSpanishDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation3 m10 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteRotterdam
City population366,221664,311
People per km²1,8192,080
Museums within 10 km840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre5277
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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