VacationSelector

Dubai or Hamburg?

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

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather with your weighting.

Hamburg
53
match

Wins on museums & heritage and nature & day trips 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.

DubaiHamburg
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiHamburg
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5216
Coast distance0 km22 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Hamburg leads by 7 points.7
DubaiHamburg
Score6673
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,150
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2638
Museums & heritage. Hamburg leads by 22 points.22
DubaiHamburg
Score3860
Museums within 10 km2694
Museums within 2 km of centre1850
Share of museums within 2 km %6953
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Hamburg leads by 15 points.15
DubaiHamburg
Score5368
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,339
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306834
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5162
Nightclubs within 4 km84119
Nature & day trips. Hamburg leads by 22 points.22
DubaiHamburg
Score1840
Protected land share 50 km %414
Landscape blanket share 50 km %010
Land share of disc %5299
Park area within 2 km13 hectares89 hectares
Good for families. Hamburg leads by 11 points.11
DubaiHamburg
Score4960
Tourist attractions within 2 km3740
Park area within 2 km13 hectares89 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Hamburg leads by 22 points.22
DubaiHamburg
Score3759
Notable places within 2 km33118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 9 points.9
DubaiHamburg
Score6960
Price level global63.475.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiHamburg
Score6655
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C4.3 °C to 23.2 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm39 mm to 82 mm
Dry months121
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
Dubai
25
26
29
34
38
41
42
42
40
36
31
27
Hamburg
4
5
9
14
18
21
23
23
19
14
8
5
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Hamburg
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Hamburg
67
55
57
39
58
74
82
77
65
63
61
72
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Hamburg
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Hamburg
1
2
4
6
7
7
7
7
5
4
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dubai: 1991-2020 normals, Dubai International Airport (3.3 km from centre). Hamburg: 1991-2020 normals, Hamburg Airport (9.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiHamburg
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€195-270
HAM · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 0 m
€178-237
HAM · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€89-225
HAM · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
PalmaPMI
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
HAM · 9 km
ZurichZRH
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€216-237
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€167-214
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€337-378
1 stop
HAM · 9 km
AntalyaAYT
3 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€162-200
HAM · 9 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€164-280
1 stop
HAM · 9 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

MeasureDubaiHamburg
Official languageArabicGerman
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsHamburg Helmut Schmidt Airport (HAM)9 km from centre119 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiHamburg
City population3,944,7511,910,160
People per km²2,530
Museums within 10 km1477
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5283
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 Dubai or Hamburg 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.