VacationSelector

Dubai or Tampa?

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 value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Tampa
44
match

Wins on nature & day trips and year-round weather 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.

DubaiTampa
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 25 points.25
DubaiTampa
Score10075
Swim season months128
Beaches 10 km5210
Coast distance0 km1 km
Water distance0 km1 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 12 points.12
DubaiTampa
Score6654
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2631
Museums & heritage. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiTampa
Score3827
Museums within 10 km2613
Museums within 2 km of centre1810
Share of museums within 2 km %6977
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Dubai leads by 14 points.14
DubaiTampa
Score5339
Drinking venues within 4 km601324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5170
Nightclubs within 4 km8426
Nature & day trips. Tampa leads by 12 points.12
DubaiTampa
Score1830
Protected land share 50 km %46
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5272
Park area within 2 km13 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 19 points.19
DubaiTampa
Score4930
Tourist attractions within 2 km373
Park area within 2 km13 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km45
Sights concentration. Dubai leads by 16 points.16
DubaiTampa
Score3721
Notable places within 2 km3313
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiTampa
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Tampa leads by 9 points.9
DubaiTampa
Score6675
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months121
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
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Tampa
7
7
9
10
11
10
9
10
8
8
7
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). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiTampa
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
14 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 35 m
€176-204
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
14 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
9 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
ZurichZRH
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
15 h 5 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
BostonBOS, PSM
13 h 15 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
TokyoHND, NRT
10 h 0 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
MCO · 125 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

MeasureDubaiTampa
Official languageArabic
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation0 m30 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiTampa
City population3,944,751384,959
People per km²848
Museums within 10 km146
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5247
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months8 months

Where else could you go?

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