VacationSelector

Ghent or Melbourne?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Melbourne
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

GhentMelbourne
Beaches & swimming. Melbourne leads by 29 points.29
GhentMelbourne
Score2655
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km819
Coast distance32 km4 km
Water distance32 km4 km
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 5 points.5
GhentMelbourne
Score7075
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7641,888
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4929
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 9 points.9
GhentMelbourne
Score5849
Museums within 10 km2442
Museums within 2 km of centre2024
Share of museums within 2 km %8357
Unesco sites within 50 km51
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 25 points.25
GhentMelbourne
Score4974
Drinking venues within 4 km5701,921
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4461,200
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7862
Nightclubs within 4 km26124
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 9 points.9
GhentMelbourne
Score3443
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %8781
Park area within 2 km84 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Melbourne leads by 10 points.10
GhentMelbourne
Score5060
Tourist attractions within 2 km1926
Park area within 2 km84 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Melbourne leads by 11 points.11
GhentMelbourne
Score4657
Notable places within 2 km55103
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 10 points.10
GhentMelbourne
Score6050
Price level global76.290.2
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 20 points.20
GhentMelbourne
Score5676
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C13.6 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm45 mm to 69 mm
Dry months10
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
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentMelbourne
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
13 h 5 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DohaDOH
6 h 25 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
14 h 20 m
€856-961
2 stops
MEL · 19 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 40 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 15 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
10 h 5 m
€542-1650
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
9 h 15 m
€407-480
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
10 h 15 m
€809-850
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
14 h 20 m
no fares
MEL · 19 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

MeasureGhentMelbourne
Official languageFrench, German, DutchEnglish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation12 m31 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentMelbourne
City population272,6575,350,705
People per km²1,728535
Museums within 10 km3042
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km51
Distinct cuisines in the centre8386
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent or Melbourne 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.