VacationSelector

Beijing or Dubai?

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

Beijing
53
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

BeijingDubai
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
BeijingDubai
Score0100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km052
Coast distance145 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 25 points.25
BeijingDubai
Score6338
Museums within 10 km9526
Museums within 2 km of centre1518
Share of museums within 2 km %1669
Unesco sites within 50 km60
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Beijing leads by 17 points.17
BeijingDubai
Score3518
Protected land share 50 km %34
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km143 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 28 points.28
BeijingDubai
Score7749
Tourist attractions within 2 km4137
Park area within 2 km143 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km124
Sights concentration. Beijing leads by 13 points.13
BeijingDubai
Score5037
Notable places within 2 km6933
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 10 points.10
BeijingDubai
Score7969
Price level global4963.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Beijing and Dubai are level on 66.
BeijingDubai
Score6666
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm0 mm to 21 mm
Dry months812
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
Beijing
2
6
13
21
27
31
32
31
27
19
10
4
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Dubai
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingDubai
RiyadhRUH
8 h 25 m
€469-684
1 stop
PKX · 45 km
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
ChengduTFU, CTU
2 h 25 m
€217-253
PKX · 45 km
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
MoscowVKO, SVO, DME, ZIA
7 h 35 m
€389-526
1 stop
PKX · 45 km
5 h 0 m
€330-383
DWC · 44 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 55 m
€151-190
PKX · 45 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
ChongqingCKG, CQW
2 h 20 m
no fares
PKX · 45 km
6 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 5 m
€1,020-1172
2 stops
PEK · 25 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
21 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
15 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBeijingDubai
Official languagePutonghuaArabic
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+4
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m0 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingDubai
City population21,893,0953,944,751
People per km²1,334
Museums within 10 km8314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km60
Distinct cuisines in the centre2952
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Beijing or Dubai 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.