VacationSelector

Cologne 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

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

CologneDubai
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
CologneDubai
Score0100
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km4052
Coast distance256 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 6 points.6
CologneDubai
Score7266
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1421,086
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3526
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 22 points.22
CologneDubai
Score6038
Museums within 10 km4726
Museums within 2 km of centre2718
Share of museums within 2 km %5769
Unesco sites within 50 km30
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 11 points.11
CologneDubai
Score6453
Drinking venues within 4 km1,107601
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre727306
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6651
Nightclubs within 4 km9084
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 53 points.53
CologneDubai
Score7118
Protected land share 50 km %534
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km118 hectares13 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 23 points.23
CologneDubai
Score7249
Tourist attractions within 2 km4337
Park area within 2 km118 hectares13 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km64
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
CologneDubai
Score5337
Notable places within 2 km8133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 9 points.9
CologneDubai
Score6069
Price level global75.963.4
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 6 points.6
CologneDubai
Score6066
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C24.5 °C to 42.1 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm0 mm to 21 mm
Dry months012
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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
Dubai
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneDubai
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 30 m
€204-239
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 10 m
€174-186
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
4 h 20 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
BerlinBER
1 h 15 m
€136-255
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
6 h 5 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

MeasureCologneDubai
Official languageGermanArabic
CurrencyEuro (EUR)UAE Dirham (AED)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCG220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+4
Emergency number112112
Elevation59 m0 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneDubai
City population1,024,6213,944,751
People per km²2,530
Museums within 10 km4014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km30
Distinct cuisines in the centre8452
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 Cologne 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.