VacationSelector

Dubai or Palermo?

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, level with your weighting

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.

Palermo
55
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

DubaiPalermo
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 33 points.33
DubaiPalermo
Score10067
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km5213
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 16 points.16
DubaiPalermo
Score6650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086807
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2613
Museums & heritage. Palermo leads by 12 points.12
DubaiPalermo
Score3850
Museums within 10 km2632
Museums within 2 km of centre1826
Share of museums within 2 km %6981
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Dubai and Palermo are level on 53.
DubaiPalermo
Score5353
Drinking venues within 4 km601799
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306515
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5164
Nightclubs within 4 km8416
Nature & day trips. Palermo leads by 18 points.18
DubaiPalermo
Score1836
Protected land share 50 km %44
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5245
Park area within 2 km13 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
DubaiPalermo
Score4941
Tourist attractions within 2 km3716
Park area within 2 km13 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Palermo leads by 20 points.20
DubaiPalermo
Score3757
Notable places within 2 km33104
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
DubaiPalermo
Score6968
Price level global63.464.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Palermo leads by 11 points.11
DubaiPalermo
Score6677
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C12.6 °C to 27.8 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm4 mm to 71 mm
Dry months127
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
Palermo
13
13
14
16
20
24
28
28
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Palermo
15
14
15
16
19
22
26
27
25
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Palermo
48
45
35
35
18
9
4
11
37
67
71
69
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Palermo
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Palermo
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
10
8
7
5
4

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). Palermo: 1961-1990 normals, Ustica (66.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiPalermo
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
6 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 45 m
€31-110
PMO · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€40-52
PMO · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 50 m
no fares
PMO · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€183-194
PMO · 25 km
NaplesNAP
5 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 0 m
€42-84
PMO · 25 km
BolognaBLQ
5 h 55 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 30 m
€28-65
PMO · 25 km
ZurichZRH
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€161-283
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
PisaPSA
6 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€47-105
PMO · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
3 h 10 m
€151-346
1 stop
PMO · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
PMO · 25 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

MeasureDubaiPalermo
Official languageArabicItalian
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m14 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsFalcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO)25 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiPalermo
City population3,944,751630,167
People per km²3,924
Museums within 10 km1442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5233
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months5 months

Where else could you go?

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