VacationSelector

Ghent or Manila?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Ghent
50
match

Wins on places to eat and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Manila
✓ Best match
60
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.

GhentManila
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 50 points.50
GhentManila
Score2676
Swim season months012
Beaches 10 km83
Coast distance32 km2 km
Water distance32 km2 km
Places to eat. Ghent leads by 12 points.12
GhentManila
Score7058
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7641,015
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4917
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 8 points.8
GhentManila
Score5850
Museums within 10 km2477
Museums within 2 km of centre2023
Share of museums within 2 km %8330
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Manila leads by 12 points.12
GhentManila
Score4961
Drinking venues within 4 km5701,082
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446374
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7835
Nightclubs within 4 km2636
Nature & day trips. Ghent leads by 5 points.5
GhentManila
Score3429
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %8778
Park area within 2 km84 hectares54 hectares
Good for families. Manila leads by 10 points.10
GhentManila
Score5060
Tourist attractions within 2 km1937
Park area within 2 km84 hectares54 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Manila leads by 6 points.6
GhentManila
Score4652
Notable places within 2 km5579
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 30 points.30
GhentManila
Score6090
Price level global76.233.7
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. Manila leads by 5 points.5
GhentManila
Score5661
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C30.5 °C to 34.6 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm24 mm to 564 mm
Dry months14
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Manila
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentManila
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
8 h 45 m
€428-448
MNL · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 40 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
9 h 15 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
13 h 5 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
4 h 5 m
€211-222
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 15 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 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

MeasureGhentManila
Official languageFrench, German, DutchEnglish, Filipino, Taglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Philippine Peso (PHP)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzABC220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112911
Elevation12 m9 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days18 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentManila
City population272,6571,902,590
People per km²1,72876,104
Museums within 10 km3027
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre8339
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent or Manila 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. 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.