VacationSelector
The church of La Compania under a blue sky, Arequipa
ArequipaThe church of La Compania under a blue sky
The pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach, St. Pete Beach
St. Pete BeachThe pink Don CeSar hotel seen from the beach

Photos: Arequipa by DocSlyper, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped; St. Pete Beach by Jeffrey Eisen, Pexels License.

Arequipa or St. Pete Beach?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Arequipa for

  • prices
  • culture and sights
  • food and drink

What lies behind each score is written up on Arequipa’s own page.

Choose St. Pete Beach for

  • beaches
  • families
  • day trips

What lies behind each score is written up on St. Pete Beach’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Arequipa 8, St. Pete Beach 87: St. Pete Beach leads by 79 points.
Food & drink. Arequipa 66, St. Pete Beach 40: Arequipa leads by 26 points.
Culture & sights. Arequipa 64, St. Pete Beach 18: Arequipa leads by 46 points.
Nightlife. Arequipa 36, St. Pete Beach 28: Arequipa leads by 8 points.
Nature & outdoors. Arequipa 74, St. Pete Beach 57: Arequipa leads by 17 points.
Day trips. Arequipa 30, St. Pete Beach 58: St. Pete Beach leads by 28 points.
Good for families. Arequipa 35, St. Pete Beach 72: St. Pete Beach leads by 37 points.
Getting around. Arequipa 54, St. Pete Beach 30: Arequipa leads by 24 points.
Shopping & style. Arequipa 44, St. Pete Beach 20: Arequipa leads by 24 points.
Affordability. Arequipa 82, St. Pete Beach 32: Arequipa leads by 50 points.
Live music & performing arts. Arequipa 27, St. Pete Beach 20: Arequipa leads by 7 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Arequipa 34, St. Pete Beach 42: St. Pete Beach leads by 8 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Arequipa and St. Pete Beach.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Arequipa
Best match
46match

Wins on prices and culture and sights with your weighting.

St. Pete Beach
42match

Wins on beaches and families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Arequipa in July

21 °Cdaytime high
7 °Cnight-time low
1 mmrain in the month
No recordsunshine a day
No seasea
11 hdaylight a day

St. Pete Beach in July

32 °Cdaytime high
26 °Cnight-time low
185 mmrain in the month
9 hsunshine a day
30 °Csea
14 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

050100150200250JFMAMJJASOND
ArequipaSt. Pete Beach

Where the figures come from

Arequipa's station stands 203 m above the city centre, so the centre is likely a little warmer than the figures say.

St. Pete Beach has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

St. Pete Beach's sunshine is measured 34 km from the centre, at Tampa International Airport.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Arequipa: 1991-2020 normals, Arequipa (9.2 km from centre). St. Pete Beach: 1998-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Saint Petersburg (12.2 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureArequipaSt. Pete Beach
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, Quechua-
CurrencySol (PEN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number111 or 911911
Elevation2,335 m2 m
Main airportRodríguez Ballón International Airport (AQP)7 km from centre2 non-stop destinationsSt. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)21 km from centre60 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year17 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureArequipaSt. Pete Beach
City population1,008,2908,879
People per km²1,551173
Museums within 10 km32
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Swim season, months above 21 °C-8 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Arequipa or St. Pete Beach somewhere new.

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-02. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.