VacationSelector

Dubai or Thessaloniki?

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.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
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.

DubaiThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 45 points.45
DubaiThessaloniki
Score10055
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km524
Coast distance0 km0 km
Water distance0 km0 km
Places to eat. Dubai leads by 16 points.16
DubaiThessaloniki
Score6650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,086640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2615
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 11 points.11
DubaiThessaloniki
Score3849
Museums within 10 km2634
Museums within 2 km of centre1822
Share of museums within 2 km %6965
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 14 points.14
DubaiThessaloniki
Score5367
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5157
Nightclubs within 4 km8461
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 47 points.47
DubaiThessaloniki
Score1865
Protected land share 50 km %425
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5283
Park area within 2 km13 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 8 points.8
DubaiThessaloniki
Score4941
Tourist attractions within 2 km3716
Park area within 2 km13 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 19 points.19
DubaiThessaloniki
Score3756
Notable places within 2 km3398
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 5 points.5
DubaiThessaloniki
Score6974
Price level global63.455.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
DubaiThessaloniki
Score6672
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months129
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

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). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiThessaloniki
AthensATH
4 h 30 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
6 h 0 m
€306-356
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
5 h 40 m
€283-323
DXB · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
3 h 10 m
€318-438
DXB · 7 km
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
6 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
LarnacaLCA
3 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€105-145
SKG · 14 km
BucharestOTP, BBU
4 h 40 m
€263-354
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
1 h 15 m
€86-115
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureDubaiThessaloniki
Official languageArabicGreek
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 destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiThessaloniki
City population3,944,751309,617
People per km²16,042
Museums within 10 km1431
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre5245
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 Thessaloniki 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.