VacationSelector

Dubai or Rome?

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

Your match

Dubai
55
match

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

Rome
✓ Best match
72
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.

DubaiRome
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 67 points.67
DubaiRome
Score10033
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km523
Coast distance0 km24 km
Water distance0 km24 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 6 points.6
DubaiRome
Score6660
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0862,241
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2610
Museums & heritage. Rome leads by 46 points.46
DubaiRome
Score3884
Museums within 10 km26161
Museums within 2 km of centre1879
Share of museums within 2 km %6949
Unesco sites within 50 km07
Nightlife. Rome leads by 21 points.21
DubaiRome
Score5374
Drinking venues within 4 km6012,022
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306912
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5145
Nightclubs within 4 km8485
Nature & day trips. Rome leads by 52 points.52
DubaiRome
Score1870
Protected land share 50 km %419
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5278
Park area within 2 km13 hectares172 hectares
Good for families. Rome leads by 37 points.37
DubaiRome
Score4986
Tourist attractions within 2 km37126
Park area within 2 km13 hectares172 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km44
Sights concentration. Rome leads by 62 points.62
DubaiRome
Score3799
Notable places within 2 km331,125
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 1 points.1
DubaiRome
Score6968
Price level global63.464.9
Daily budget€155
Year-round weather. Rome leads by 5 points.5
DubaiRome
Score6671
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C12 °C to 31.4 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm21 mm to 114 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
Rome
12
13
16
18
24
28
31
31
27
22
17
13
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rome
15
14
14
15
18
22
25
25
24
21
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Rome
67
69
57
75
62
33
21
38
70
97
114
103
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Rome
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Rome
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
11
8
6
4
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). Rome: 1991-2020 normals, Roma / Ciampino (15.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiRome
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€76-143
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€91-122
FCO · 23 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€136-291
FCO · 23 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
8 h 45 m
€446-597
FCO · 23 km
MadridMAD
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€98-119
FCO · 23 km
CataniaCTA
5 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€60-112
FCO · 23 km
BarcelonaBCN
6 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 40 m
€44-74
FCO · 23 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
3 h 20 m
€115-179
FCO · 23 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
15 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
11 h 45 m
€893-1016
1 stop
FCO · 23 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
11 h 15 m
€630-760
FCO · 23 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

MeasureDubaiRome
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 m21 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsRome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)23 km from centre230 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiRome
City population3,944,7512,748,109
People per km²2,135
Museums within 10 km14177
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km07
Distinct cuisines in the centre5265
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 Rome 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.