VacationSelector

Bath or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Bath
40
match

Wins on nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

The verdict

Choose Bath if you want a small, walkable heritage city with open countryside close by: 28% of the surrounding land is protected, and its museums sit tightly around the centre.

Choose Rotterdam if eating out matters, or if you are travelling with children: many more kitchens near the centre, more attractions and theme parks, and 22 beaches within reach of a coast 24km away.

Scoreboard

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

BathRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 29 points.29
BathRotterdam
Score837
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km122
Coast distance29 km24 km
Water distance29 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 26 points.26
BathRotterdam
Score4672
Restaurants within 2 km of centre245862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2646
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 13 points.13
BathRotterdam
Score4760
Museums within 10 km2041
Museums within 2 km of centre1420
Share of museums within 2 km %7049
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 13 points.13
BathRotterdam
Score3649
Drinking venues within 4 km320542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre240378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7570
Nightclubs within 4 km1140
Nature & day trips. Bath leads by 2 points.2
BathRotterdam
Score4442
Protected land share 50 km %2810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %270
Land share of disc %9279
Park area within 2 km45 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 22 points.22
BathRotterdam
Score4062
Tourist attractions within 2 km1427
Park area within 2 km45 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 19 points.19
BathRotterdam
Score3251
Notable places within 2 km2574
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
BathRotterdam
Score5458
Price level global84.979.2
Daily budget—€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
BathRotterdam
Score5556
Monthly daytime high6.8 °C to 21.4 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall49 mm to 87 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

Where they differ

Bath is the greener trip: 28% of the land around it is protected against 10% around Rotterdam, and what museums it has are packed tightly around the centre, so little walking is needed.

Rotterdam has about three times as many restaurants near the centre and a much wider range of kitchens. It also has 22 beaches nearby against Bath's 1, and 8 theme parks within reach against Bath's 1, with more park space near the centre.

Where they are alike

Weather is where the two are hardest to separate. Both run daytime highs of about 7-21°C across the year, and neither has a month at 40mm of rain or less, so wet days are possible in any season.

They are also close on day trips and on value for money. Bath's surroundings are protected open country, Rotterdam's green space sits nearer the centre, and neither pulls ahead once the two are set side by side.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling to eat and drink should take Rotterdam. It has roughly three times as many restaurants near the centre, a much wider spread of kitchens, and more bars and clubs within walking distance of the middle.

Families are better served in Rotterdam too: about twice as many attractions near the centre, 8 theme parks within reach against Bath's 1, more park space, and 22 beaches close by for a warm day.

Walkers and heritage travellers do better in Bath, where 28% of the surrounding land is protected and the museums cluster closely enough that a day of them works on foot.

What the numbers don't tell you

No cost comparison is possible here. The dataset carries a daily budget for Rotterdam, about €181, and none for Bath, so nothing here says which is the cheaper trip. Their value-for-money standing rests on a different measure both cities have.

Rotterdam's beach count also flatters it. The sea peaks at 19°C and neither city has a month at 21°C or more, so swimming is short and cold rather than a reason to book. Rotterdam's warmest months are also its wettest, at 85mm at the peak.

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
Bath
7
8
10
13
16
19
21
21
18
14
10
7
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bath
8
7
7
9
12
15
18
18
17
15
12
9
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Bath
77
55
49
54
56
56
61
66
54
87
83
79
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Bath
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bath
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
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. Bath: 1991-2020 normals, Lyneham (29.2 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Bath is the better summer pick: June to August bring highs of 19-21°C with 56-66mm of rain, against 71-85mm in Rotterdam over the same weeks, so its warmest months are also among its drier ones.

Rotterdam is stronger in spring. April is its driest month at 42mm, and May is warmer than Bath's at 17°C, so the shoulder season arrives sooner there. In high summer it is marginally warmer but consistently wetter. Late autumn is heavy going in both.

Getting there

Flying fromBathRotterdam
DublinDUB
1 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 0 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
BRS · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
55 m
no fares
LHR · 132 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 10 m
€518-651
1 stop
LHR · 132 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 15 m
no fares
BHX · 126 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 20 m
no fares
BHX · 126 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 30 m
€665-831
1 stop
LHR · 132 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
BridgetownBGI
8 h 25 m
no fares
CWL · 68 km
9 h 5 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

MeasureBathRotterdam
Official languageEnglishDutch
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112 or 911
Elevation132 m10 m
Main airportBristol Airport (BRS)25 km from centre116 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year8 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBathRotterdam
City population94,092664,311
People per km²3,2452,080
Museums within 10 km1740
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre3877
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bath 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.

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.