VacationSelector

Bologna or Dubai?

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

Your match

Bologna
52
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

Dubai
✓ Best match
55
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.

Scoreboard

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

BolognaDubai
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
BolognaDubai
Score0100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km252
Coast distance74 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
BolognaDubai
Score5866
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8221,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2026
Museums & heritage. Bologna leads by 29 points.29
BolognaDubai
Score6738
Museums within 10 km5826
Museums within 2 km of centre4318
Share of museums within 2 km %7469
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Bologna and Dubai are level on 53.
BolognaDubai
Score5353
Drinking venues within 4 km720601
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre531306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7451
Nightclubs within 4 km3084
Nature & day trips. Bologna leads by 21 points.21
BolognaDubai
Score3918
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %10
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km119 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Bologna leads by 6 points.6
BolognaDubai
Score5549
Tourist attractions within 2 km3237
Park area within 2 km119 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Bologna leads by 23 points.23
BolognaDubai
Score6037
Notable places within 2 km12033
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
BolognaDubai
Score6869
Price level global64.963.4
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Bologna leads by 1 points.1
BolognaDubai
Score6766
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 31.5 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall34 mm to 75 mm0 mm to 21 mm
Dry months512
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
Bologna
7
10
15
19
24
29
32
32
26
19
13
8
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Bologna
No coastline within reach
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Bologna
36
36
49
54
50
37
34
40
75
75
70
58
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Bologna
9
10
12
13
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Bologna
3
4
6
7
8
10
11
10
7
5
3
3
Dubai
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bologna: 1991-2020 normals, Bologna / Borgo Panigale (5.5 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBolognaDubai
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€154-191
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 0 m
€114-267
BLQ · 6 km
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 40 m
€41-45
BLQ · 6 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
€96-199
BLQ · 6 km
5 h 5 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 40 m
€42-75
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
2 h 5 m
€74-144
BLQ · 6 km
4 h 40 m
€263-354
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€158-262
1 stop
BLQ · 6 km
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
RiyadhRUH
5 h 10 m
no fares
VCE · 138 km
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 30 m
€637-650
VCE · 138 km
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
MaleMLE
9 h 35 m
no fares
VRN · 106 km
4 h 15 m
€397-414
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

MeasureBolognaDubai
Official languageItalianArabic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+4
Emergency number112112
Elevation54 m0 m
Main airportBologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport (BLQ)6 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBolognaDubai
City population387,9713,944,751
People per km²2,754
Museums within 10 km6614
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre6252
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 Bologna 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). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.