VacationSelector

Biarritz or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Biarritz
✓ Best match
38
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on good for families 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.

Scoreboard

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

BiarritzLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Biarritz leads by 67 points.67
BiarritzLucerne
Score670
Swim season months20
Beaches 10 km4316
Coast distance1 km669 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Lucerne leads by 15 points.15
BiarritzLucerne
Score3247
Restaurants within 2 km of centre207269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1325
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 9 points.9
BiarritzLucerne
Score3140
Museums within 10 km1623
Museums within 2 km of centre513
Share of museums within 2 km %3157
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Lucerne leads by 13 points.13
BiarritzLucerne
Score1528
Drinking venues within 4 km105202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre82151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7875
Nightclubs within 4 km611
Nature & day trips. Biarritz leads by 5 points.5
BiarritzLucerne
Score3025
Protected land share 50 km %67
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %64100
Park area within 2 km32 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 17 points.17
BiarritzLucerne
Score2138
Tourist attractions within 2 km215
Park area within 2 km32 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Lucerne leads by 12 points.12
BiarritzLucerne
Score2335
Notable places within 2 km1529
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Biarritz leads by 27 points.27
BiarritzLucerne
Score6235
Price level global73.7110.5
Daily budget€160€248
Year-round weather. Biarritz leads by 12 points.12
BiarritzLucerne
Score6553
Monthly daytime high13.1 °C to 25.8 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall97 mm to 224 mm60 mm to 128 mm
Dry months00
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
Biarritz
13
14
16
18
21
23
25
26
24
21
16
14
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Biarritz
13
12
12
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Biarritz
166
143
127
147
133
106
97
110
146
166
224
179
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Biarritz
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Biarritz
3
3
5
5
6
6
7
7
6
4
3
2
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Biarritz: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Fuenterrabia (24.4 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBiarritzLucerne
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 3 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
1 h 50 m
€84-103
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 23 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 111 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
no fares
EAS · 23 km
1 h 40 m
€114-151
ZRH · 49 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
MarrakechRAK
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 111 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
BSL · 85 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

MeasureBiarritzLucerne
Official languageFrenchFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m436 m
Main airportBiarritz Pays Basque airport (BIQ)3 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureBiarritzLucerne
City population26,20686,234
People per km²2,2402,963
Museums within 10 km814
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre2446
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 Biarritz or Lucerne 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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. 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. 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.