VacationSelector

Dubai or Valencia?

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 good for families with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
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.

DubaiValencia
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 33 points.33
DubaiValencia
Score10067
Swim season months125
Beaches 10 km5212
Coast distance0 km3 km
Water distance0 km3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 12 points.12
DubaiValencia
Score6678
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2633
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 17 points.17
DubaiValencia
Score3855
Museums within 10 km2659
Museums within 2 km of centre1826
Share of museums within 2 km %6944
Unesco sites within 50 km02
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 17 points.17
DubaiValencia
Score5370
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5163
Nightclubs within 4 km84108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 35 points.35
DubaiValencia
Score1853
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5264
Park area within 2 km13 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 7 points.7
DubaiValencia
Score4942
Tourist attractions within 2 km3712
Park area within 2 km13 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km40
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 15 points.15
DubaiValencia
Score3752
Notable places within 2 km3378
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia leads by 2 points.2
DubaiValencia
Score6971
Price level global63.460.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 18 points.18
DubaiValencia
Score6684
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months128
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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Dubai
No sunshine record
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

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). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiValencia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
PalmaPMI
6 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
6 h 45 m
€334-439
DXB · 7 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
6 h 50 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
3 h 35 m
€167-378
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
5 h 45 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
ZurichZRH
6 h 15 m
€237-344
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
2 h 0 m
€151-206
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
6 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
7 h 20 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
13 h 10 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 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

MeasureDubaiValencia
Official languageArabicSpanish
CurrencyUAE Dirham (AED)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCG220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+4UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation0 m15 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiValencia
City population3,944,751840,792
People per km²6,242
Museums within 10 km1446
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km02
Distinct cuisines in the centre5292
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 Valencia 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.