VacationSelector

Ghent or New York?

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 with your weighting.

New York
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and beaches & swimming 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.

GhentNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 38 points.38
GhentNew York
Score2664
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km817
Coast distance32 km1 km
Water distance32 km1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 25 points.25
GhentNew York
Score7095
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7646,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4938
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 2 points.2
GhentNew York
Score5860
Museums within 10 km24119
Museums within 2 km of centre2031
Share of museums within 2 km %8326
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. New York leads by 40 points.40
GhentNew York
Score4989
Drinking venues within 4 km5704,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre4462,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7848
Nightclubs within 4 km26192
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 5 points.5
GhentNew York
Score3439
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %40
Land share of disc %8769
Park area within 2 km84 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 22 points.22
GhentNew York
Score5072
Tourist attractions within 2 km1937
Park area within 2 km84 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km17
Sights concentration. New York leads by 28 points.28
GhentNew York
Score4674
Notable places within 2 km55268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 17 points.17
GhentNew York
Score6043
Price level global76.2100
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. New York leads by 2 points.2
GhentNew York
Score5658
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
New York
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). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentNew York
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
7 h 55 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
8 h 45 m
€362-464
JFK · 21 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 5 m
€203-258
LGA · 13 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 56 km
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€36-101
BRU · 56 km
8 h 15 m
€430-458
JFK · 21 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
JFK · 21 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

MeasureGhentNew York
Official languageFrench, German, Dutch–
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation12 m25 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentNew York
City population272,6578,804,190
People per km²1,7287,256
Museums within 10 km30157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre83132
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent or New York 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.