VacationSelector

Dubai or Marrakech?

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

Your match

Dubai
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Marrakech
50
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

DubaiMarrakech
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 100 points.100
DubaiMarrakech
Score1000
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km520
Coast distance0 km134 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 12 points.12
DubaiMarrakech
Score6654
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086461
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2626
Museums & heritage. Marrakech leads by 6 points.6
DubaiMarrakech
Score3844
Museums within 10 km2622
Museums within 2 km of centre1817
Share of museums within 2 km %6977
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 16 points.16
DubaiMarrakech
Score5337
Drinking venues within 4 km601282
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306161
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5157
Nightclubs within 4 km8432
Nature & day trips. Marrakech leads by 34 points.34
DubaiMarrakech
Score1852
Protected land share 50 km %4
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %52100
Park area within 2 km13 hectares47 hectares
Good for families. Marrakech leads by 4 points.4
DubaiMarrakech
Score4953
Tourist attractions within 2 km3728
Park area within 2 km13 hectares47 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Marrakech leads by 9 points.9
DubaiMarrakech
Score3746
Notable places within 2 km3355
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Marrakech leads by 17 points.17
DubaiMarrakech
Score6986
Price level global63.439.8
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Marrakech leads by 15 points.15
DubaiMarrakech
Score6681
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C19.1 °C to 37.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm1 mm to 36 mm
Dry months1212
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
Marrakech
19
21
24
26
30
34
38
37
33
29
23
20
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Marrakech
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Marrakech
26
27
36
28
9
3
1
3
14
19
29
25
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Marrakech
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Marrakech
8
8
8
9
10
11
11
10
9
8
8
7

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). Marrakech: 1991-2020 normals, Marrakech (5.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiMarrakech
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€140-172
RAK · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 10 m
€85-123
RAK · 6 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 30 m
€122-160
1 stop
RAK · 6 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
4 h 30 m
€148-173
1 stop
RAK · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
4 h 40 m
no fares
RAK · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
3 h 40 m
€201-233
1 stop
RAK · 6 km
BudapestBUD
5 h 25 m
€345-378
DXB · 7 km
4 h 5 m
€148-172
2 stops
RAK · 6 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
4 h 40 m
€263-354
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
4 h 30 m
no fares
RAK · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
6 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 10 m
€61-121
RAK · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
RAK · 6 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

MeasureDubaiMarrakech
Official languageArabicArabic, Standard Moroccan Tamazight
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Moroccan Dirham (MAD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCE50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1
Emergency number112Police 19/112, ambulance 15, fire 15
Elevation0 m465 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsMarrakesh Menara Airport (RAK)6 km from centre118 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiMarrakech
City population3,944,7511,002,697
People per km²4,360
Museums within 10 km1414
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5256
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 Marrakech 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. 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.