VacationSelector

Kyoto or Valletta?

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, 2 points apart

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

Valletta
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming 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.

KyotoValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 60 points.60
KyotoValletta
Score1777
Swim season months56
Beaches 10 km022
Coast distance47 km0 km
Water distance47 km0 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 26 points.26
KyotoValletta
Score8458
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,023416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2235
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 11 points.11
KyotoValletta
Score7261
Museums within 10 km13246
Museums within 2 km of centre5129
Share of museums within 2 km %3963
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 33 points.33
KyotoValletta
Score8047
Drinking venues within 4 km3,215522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7348
Nightclubs within 4 km2627
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 24 points.24
KyotoValletta
Score2246
Protected land share 50 km %2—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %1006
Park area within 2 km45 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 20 points.20
KyotoValletta
Score6646
Tourist attractions within 2 km6232
Park area within 2 km45 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 9 points.9
KyotoValletta
Score5261
Notable places within 2 km79133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 1 points.1
KyotoValletta
Score7069
Price level global62.462.8
Daily budget—€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 17 points.17
KyotoValletta
Score6279
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months06
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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
3 h 0 m
€205-271
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
HamburgHAM, XFW, LBC
11 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureKyotoValletta
Official languageJapaneseEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyYen (JPY)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftLeft
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119112
Elevation51 m56 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoValletta
City population1,463,7236,444
People per km²1,7688,055
Museums within 10 km7615
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre8955
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months6 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto or Valletta 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.