VacationSelector

Dubai or New Orleans?

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 value for money with your weighting.

New Orleans
47
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.

DubaiNew Orleans
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 61 points.61
DubaiNew Orleans
Score10039
Swim season months127
Beaches 10 km523
Coast distance0 km21 km
Water distance0 km17 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 5 points.5
DubaiNew Orleans
Score6661
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086803
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2625
Museums & heritage. New Orleans leads by 7 points.7
DubaiNew Orleans
Score3845
Museums within 10 km2642
Museums within 2 km of centre1830
Share of museums within 2 km %6971
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. New Orleans leads by 1 points.1
DubaiNew Orleans
Score5354
Drinking venues within 4 km601704
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306495
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5170
Nightclubs within 4 km8441
Nature & day trips. New Orleans leads by 7 points.7
DubaiNew Orleans
Score1825
Protected land share 50 km %44
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5289
Park area within 2 km13 hectares43 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 3 points.3
DubaiNew Orleans
Score4946
Tourist attractions within 2 km3722
Park area within 2 km13 hectares43 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. New Orleans leads by 3 points.3
DubaiNew Orleans
Score3740
Notable places within 2 km3340
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiNew Orleans
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. New Orleans leads by 2 points.2
DubaiNew Orleans
Score6668
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C17.1 °C to 33 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm94 mm to 194 mm
Dry months120
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
New Orleans
17
19
23
26
30
32
33
33
31
27
22
18
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
New Orleans
14
15
18
22
25
29
30
30
28
24
20
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
New Orleans
132
104
111
132
143
194
169
180
128
94
98
123
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
New Orleans
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10

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). New Orleans: 1991-2020 normals, New Orleans Airport (2.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiNew Orleans
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€254-325
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
14 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
14 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€208-268
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
15 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
15 h 5 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 30 m
€106-150
1 stop
MSY · 18 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 50 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
HoustonIAH, HOU
16 h 5 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
OrlandoMCO, SFB, ORL
15 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
MSY · 18 km
BostonBOS, PSM
13 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
3 h 15 m
no fares
MSY · 18 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

MeasureDubaiNew Orleans
Official languageArabic
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m-2 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsLouis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)18 km from centre50 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiNew Orleans
City population3,944,751383,997
People per km²423
Museums within 10 km1416
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5239
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months7 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dubai or New Orleans 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). 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.