VacationSelector

Dubai or Rotterdam?

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, 1 point apart

Dubai
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on nature & day trips and museums & heritage 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.

DubaiRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 63 points.63
DubaiRotterdam
Score10037
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km5222
Coast distance0 km24 km
Water distance0 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 6 points.6
DubaiRotterdam
Score6672
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2646
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 22 points.22
DubaiRotterdam
Score3860
Museums within 10 km2641
Museums within 2 km of centre1820
Share of museums within 2 km %6949
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 4 points.4
DubaiRotterdam
Score5349
Drinking venues within 4 km601542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5170
Nightclubs within 4 km8440
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 24 points.24
DubaiRotterdam
Score1842
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5279
Park area within 2 km13 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 13 points.13
DubaiRotterdam
Score4962
Tourist attractions within 2 km3727
Park area within 2 km13 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 14 points.14
DubaiRotterdam
Score3751
Notable places within 2 km3374
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiRotterdam
Score6958
Price level global63.479.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 10 points.10
DubaiRotterdam
Score6656
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

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). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
7 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
6 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
8 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
16 h 45 m
€1,139-1335
DXB · 7 km
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureDubaiRotterdam
Official languageArabicDutch
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation0 m10 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiRotterdam
City population3,944,751664,311
People per km²2,080
Museums within 10 km1440
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre5277
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 Rotterdam 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.