AlUla or Eilat?

This is Eilat's whole reason for existing, and AlUla doesn't compete. The desert oasis is far inland, the Red Sea coast lies a long drive away over the mountains, and a swim means the pool at your resort or camp.

Eilat has only a few kilometres of shore, often coarse and gravelly underfoot. Still, the water is calm, clear and warm through the winter. North Beach is the place for loungers and watersports. Further south, the reserve beaches put you straight onto a living reef.

Neither is a place to travel for its food, but Eilat gives you more ways to eat outside your hotel. AlUla's meals happen mostly in resort restaurants and on a short strip of Old Town terraces. The local dates and cardamom-scented coffee are the high points, and outside the main season some kitchens close.

Eilat has its share of buffets and promenade restaurants aimed at visitors. Walk into the older neighbourhoods, though, and you will find hummus counters, shawarma, falafel and grilled Red Sea fish, the kind of casual local eating AlUla doesn't have.

AlUla is one of the great archaeological destinations of the region, and Eilat barely features. Hegra, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, has more than a hundred carved Nabataean tombs set in open desert. Add the cliff tombs of Dadan, the inscriptions at Jabal Ikmah and the mud-brick Old Town below its fort, and a few deep days are well filled. The sites are spread out and mostly seen on guided visits.

Eilat is a young port and resort town of hotel towers and malls. Its history lies outside town, at the copper workings of Timna or across the border.

If you want a night out, only Eilat offers one. AlUla has no bars or clubs. Evenings mean a late dinner, a stroll through the lit Old Town and stargazing at dark-sky sites in the desert.

Eilat's promenade and lagoon fill with bars, pubs and beach parties on summer weekends and in school breaks, and a few clubs stay open past midnight. The music is mainstream pop and dance, and on midweek nights in the quiet months the scene thins out.

Both are strong outdoor destinations, but the landscapes are very different. AlUla is all land: sandstone formations such as Elephant Rock, palm groves in the valley, the black lava plateau of Harrat Uwayrid and the red canyons of the Sharaan reserve. You can explore them by via ferrata, on camel or horseback, or from a hot-air balloon.

Eilat's best nature is underwater. Its reef is among the most accessible anywhere, with diving centres along the coast road and a resident dolphin pod. Inland, it adds the Red Canyon trails, Timna's rock formations and the great spring and autumn bird migrations.

Eilat has the better outing, and it is a famous one: Petra, across the Jordanian border, reached in about two hours from the crossing, with Aqaba's fort and souk as a shorter alternative. Anyone who has seen Hegra will find the Nabataean link to Petra especially rewarding.

From AlUla, the options are the old oasis towns of Tayma and Khaybar, with their great well, city walls and basalt fortress. Each is a two-hour drive across empty desert, and most people stay within the valley instead.

Eilat is built for family vacations, and AlUla is not. Eilat has calm water with no surf, hotel kids' clubs and pools, the underwater observatory and shark tanks at Coral World, glass-bottom boats and snorkelling off the jetties. All of it is close together.

AlUla can thrill older children with ziplines, camel rides, climbing and the sheer size of the tombs. Its sites are far apart, though, there is nothing designed for children, and outside winter the walking in the sun is hard going with little ones.

In Eilat you can mostly manage without a car, while in AlUla you can't. Eilat's lagoon hotels, North Beach, the promenade and the malls are all within a short walk of each other. A taxi or local bus covers the few kilometres south to the reef beaches. A car only matters for Timna or the mountain trails.

AlUla stretches along a long valley, with the Old Town, Elephant Rock and Hegra often 20km or more apart and no ordinary public transport. Each day depends on site shuttles, a hire car or a driver.

Eilat offers more, though it is hardly a shopping destination. Its VAT-free malls bring Israelis for chain fashion, electronics and cosmetics, and Eilat stone jewellery is the one local speciality. Visitors from abroad will find little that is new to them.

AlUla's shopping is a handful of Old Town craft and design shops selling weaving, pottery and perfume, some of it from the local arts school. A box of oasis dates is the souvenir worth carrying home.

Both are expensive, and neither makes a budget trip easy. The costs build up in different ways, though. In AlUla, the bill comes from luxury resorts and tented camps, ticketed guided tours to the main sites and a car or driver every day. Simpler rooms are few.

Eilat leaves more room to economise. Midweek and quieter-month rates drop, self-catering apartments and guesthouses away from the beachfront are available, and hummus counters and falafel stands cost far less than the promenade restaurants.

AlUla offers more, provided you time the trip for its winter festival season. Then Maraya, the mirrored concert hall in a desert canyon, hosts international singers and orchestras, and Saudi dance and music are staged among the rocks. The rest of the year is quiet.

Eilat's best-known event is its long-running jazz festival by the Red Sea. Otherwise there are hotel shows, bar musicians on the promenade and occasional Israeli headliners during festivals, and no theatre at all.

Both are good places to unwind, and in both the relaxation comes from the resorts rather than from any local bathing tradition. AlUla's version is silence: sunrise yoga, pools set among the rocks and evenings by a fire under a very dark sky.

Eilat offers hotel spas with hammam-style steam rooms and Dead Sea mineral treatments, plus long, warm winter days by the water. It is restful midweek, but much noisier when festivals and school breaks fill the town.