VacationSelector

Dubai or Washington DC?

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 beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
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.

DubaiWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Dubai leads by 82 points.82
DubaiWashington DC
Score10018
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km521
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 11 points.11
DubaiWashington DC
Score6677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,0861,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2636
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
DubaiWashington DC
Score3855
Museums within 10 km2683
Museums within 2 km of centre1855
Share of museums within 2 km %6966
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
DubaiWashington DC
Score5361
Drinking venues within 4 km6011,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre306593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5158
Nightclubs within 4 km8454
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 24 points.24
DubaiWashington DC
Score1842
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5294
Park area within 2 km13 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Dubai leads by 11 points.11
DubaiWashington DC
Score4938
Tourist attractions within 2 km377
Park area within 2 km13 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 39 points.39
DubaiWashington DC
Score3776
Notable places within 2 km33305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Dubai leads by 26 points.26
DubaiWashington DC
Score6943
Price level global63.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Dubai leads by 4 points.4
DubaiWashington DC
Score6662
Monthly daytime high24.5 °C to 42.1 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 21 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Dubai
23
22
23
25
29
31
33
33
33
31
28
25
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Dubai
21
6
11
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
18
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Dubai
11
11
12
13
13
14
14
13
12
12
11
11
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDubaiWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 35 m
€476-487
DXB · 7 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
7 h 10 m
€226-241
DXB · 7 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
RiyadhRUH
1 h 40 m
€106-123
1 stop
DXB · 7 km
13 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
15 h 5 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
4 h 15 m
€175-294
DXB · 7 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 25 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
CharlotteCLT
14 h 40 m
no fares
AUH · 114 km
1 h 15 m
€187-219
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
14 h 40 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
SeoulICN, GMP
8 h 35 m
no fares
DXB · 7 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureDubaiWashington DC
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 m72 m
Main airportDubai International Airport (DXB)7 km from centre292 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureDubaiWashington DC
City population3,944,751689,545
People per km²3,896
Museums within 10 km1499
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre5282
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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