VacationSelector

Beijing or Marseille?

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

Your match

Beijing
53
match

Wins on good for families and value for money with your weighting.

Marseille
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

BeijingMarseille
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 67 points.67
BeijingMarseille
Score067
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km064
Coast distance145 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Museums & heritage. Beijing leads by 13 points.13
BeijingMarseille
Score6350
Museums within 10 km9533
Museums within 2 km of centre1523
Share of museums within 2 km %1670
Unesco sites within 50 km61
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Beijing.
Nature & day trips. Marseille leads by 2 points.2
BeijingMarseille
Score3537
Protected land share 50 km %315
Landscape blanket share 50 km %013
Land share of disc %10056
Park area within 2 km143 hectares25 hectares
Good for families. Beijing leads by 33 points.33
BeijingMarseille
Score7744
Tourist attractions within 2 km4117
Park area within 2 km143 hectares25 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km124
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 8 points.8
BeijingMarseille
Score5058
Notable places within 2 km69111
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Beijing leads by 17 points.17
BeijingMarseille
Score7962
Price level global4973.7
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 9 points.9
BeijingMarseille
Score6675
Monthly daytime high2.2 °C to 31.8 °C11.8 °C to 30.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 163 mm11 mm to 82 mm
Dry months86
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
Marseille
12
13
16
19
24
28
31
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Beijing
No coastline within reach
Marseille
13
13
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
19
17
15
Rainfall, mm
Beijing
3
6
9
23
38
74
163
112
56
27
14
3
Marseille
47
30
29
51
38
28
11
26
82
72
76
41
Daylight, hours per day
Beijing
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Marseille
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Beijing
6
6
7
8
9
7
6
7
7
7
6
6
Marseille
5
6
8
8
10
11
12
11
9
6
5
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Beijing: 1991-2020 normals, Beijing (11.1 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBeijingMarseille
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
10 h 20 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€110-119
MRS · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
10 h 15 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€65-134
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 0 m
€475-645
PEK · 25 km
2 h 55 m
€219-245
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
1 h 55 m
€144-160
PKX · 45 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 45 m
€180-197
PKX · 45 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
10 h 0 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€86-123
1 stop
MRS · 21 km
MadridMAD
11 h 30 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
AmsterdamAMS
9 h 55 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 50 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
MunichMUC
9 h 45 m
no fares
PEK · 25 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
MRS · 21 km
LisbonLIS
12 h 5 m
no fares
PKX · 45 km
2 h 10 m
€136-184
1 stop
MRS · 21 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

MeasureBeijingMarseille
Official languagePutonghuaFrench
CurrencyYuan Renminbi (CNY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsACI220 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, ambulance 120, fire 119112
Elevation43 m0 m
Main airportBeijing Capital International Airport (PEK)25 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsMarseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year6 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBeijingMarseille
City population21,893,095886,040
People per km²1,3343,683
Museums within 10 km8327
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km61
Distinct cuisines in the centre2993
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

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