VacationSelector

Dubai or Riga?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Riga
53
match

Wins on nature & day trips and sights concentration 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.

DubaiRiga
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 60 points.60
DubaiRiga
Score10040
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5257
Coast distance0 km12 km
Water distance0 km12 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiRiga
Score6659
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086470
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2633
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 23 points.23
DubaiRiga
Score3861
Museums within 10 km2669
Museums within 2 km of centre1847
Share of museums within 2 km %6968
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 2 points.2
DubaiRiga
Score5351
Drinking venues within 4 km601584
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306456
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5178
Nightclubs within 4 km8454
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 26 points.26
DubaiRiga
Score1844
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5273
Park area within 2 km13 hectares68 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 14 points.14
DubaiRiga
Score4935
Tourist attractions within 2 km377
Park area within 2 km13 hectares68 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Riga leads by 25 points.25
DubaiRiga
Score3762
Notable places within 2 km33137
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 7 points.7
DubaiRiga
Score6976
Price level global63.453.7
Daily budget€132
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 14 points.14
DubaiRiga
Score6652
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm33 mm to 87 mm
Dry months123
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
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
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). Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiRiga
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
HelsinkiHEL
6 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
OsloOSL, TRF
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
WarsawWAW, WMI
5 h 35 m
€244-282
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
TashkentTAS
3 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
RIX · 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

MeasureDubaiRiga
Official languageArabicLatvian
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m6 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinations

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiRiga
City population3,944,751588,911
Museums within 10 km1412
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5255
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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