VacationSelector

Lucerne or Melbourne?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

LucerneMelbourne
Beaches & swimming. Melbourne leads by 55 points.55
LucerneMelbourne
Score055
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1619
Coast distance669 km4 km
Water distance—4 km
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 28 points.28
LucerneMelbourne
Score4775
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,888
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2529
Museums & heritage. Melbourne leads by 9 points.9
LucerneMelbourne
Score4049
Museums within 10 km2342
Museums within 2 km of centre1324
Share of museums within 2 km %5757
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 46 points.46
LucerneMelbourne
Score2874
Drinking venues within 4 km2021,921
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1511,200
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7562
Nightclubs within 4 km11124
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 18 points.18
LucerneMelbourne
Score2543
Protected land share 50 km %76
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10081
Park area within 2 km29 hectares166 hectares
Good for families. Melbourne leads by 22 points.22
LucerneMelbourne
Score3860
Tourist attractions within 2 km1526
Park area within 2 km29 hectares166 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Melbourne leads by 22 points.22
LucerneMelbourne
Score3557
Notable places within 2 km29103
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Melbourne leads by 15 points.15
LucerneMelbourne
Score3550
Price level global110.590.2
Daily budget€248—
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 23 points.23
LucerneMelbourne
Score5376
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C13.6 °C to 26.8 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm45 mm to 69 mm
Dry months00
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
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. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneMelbourne
SingaporeSIN, XSP
12 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
14 h 20 m
€856-961
2 stops
MEL · 19 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 15 m
€407-480
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
DohaDOH
5 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
15 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 5 m
€542-1650
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
New DelhiDEL
7 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
12 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 15 m
€809-850
1 stop
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

MeasureLucerneMelbourne
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshEnglish
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Australian Dollar (AUD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzI230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+10, UTC+11 in summer
Emergency number112000
Elevation436 m31 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneMelbourne
City population86,2345,350,705
People per km²2,963535
Museums within 10 km1442
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4686
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 Lucerne 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. 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.