VacationSelector

Geneva or Ghent?

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, level with your weighting

Geneva
50
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Ghent
50
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

GenevaGhent
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 26 points.26
GenevaGhent
Score026
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km438
Coast distance279 km32 km
Water distance—32 km
Places to eat. Geneva and Ghent are level on 70.
GenevaGhent
Score7070
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,028764
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3549
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 6 points.6
GenevaGhent
Score5258
Museums within 10 km3524
Museums within 2 km of centre2020
Share of museums within 2 km %5783
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Geneva leads by 1 points.1
GenevaGhent
Score5049
Drinking venues within 4 km549570
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427446
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7878
Nightclubs within 4 km6026
Nature & day trips. Geneva leads by 25 points.25
GenevaGhent
Score5934
Protected land share 50 km %277
Landscape blanket share 50 km %214
Land share of disc %10087
Park area within 2 km182 hectares84 hectares
Good for families. Geneva leads by 15 points.15
GenevaGhent
Score6550
Tourist attractions within 2 km2819
Park area within 2 km182 hectares84 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Geneva leads by 10 points.10
GenevaGhent
Score5646
Notable places within 2 km9955
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 25 points.25
GenevaGhent
Score3560
Price level global110.576.2
Daily budget€248€180
Year-round weather. Geneva leads by 3 points.3
GenevaGhent
Score5956
Monthly daytime high5.1 °C to 26.8 °C6.4 °C to 22 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 94 mm35 mm to 79 mm
Dry months01
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
Geneva
5
7
12
16
20
24
27
26
21
16
9
6
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Geneva
No coastline within reach
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Geneva
71
55
61
66
77
81
77
80
87
94
87
88
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Daylight, hours per day
Geneva
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Geneva
2
3
6
6
7
8
9
8
6
4
2
2
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Geneva: 1991-2020 normals, Geneve-Cointrin (5.7 km from centre). Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGenevaGhent
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€91-200
GVA · 5 km
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
MadridMAD
1 h 50 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 25 m
€65-78
GVA · 5 km
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 25 m
€156-181
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 56 km
PortoOPO
2 h 10 m
€127-171
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
2 h 25 m
€92-143
BRU · 56 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 55 m
€147-338
GVA · 5 km
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€318-351
1 stop
GVA · 5 km
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 5 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 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

MeasureGenevaGhent
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation403 m12 m
Main airportGeneva International Airport (GVA)5 km from centre140 non-stop destinationsBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureGenevaGhent
City population209,061272,657
People per km²13,1481,728
Museums within 10 km3530
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre8083
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Geneva or Ghent 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.