VacationSelector

Lucerne or New York?

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.

New York
✓ Best match
66
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.

LucerneNew York
Beaches & swimming. New York leads by 64 points.64
LucerneNew York
Score064
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km1617
Coast distance669 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. New York leads by 48 points.48
LucerneNew York
Score4795
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2696,032
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2538
Museums & heritage. New York leads by 20 points.20
LucerneNew York
Score4060
Museums within 10 km23119
Museums within 2 km of centre1331
Share of museums within 2 km %5726
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. New York leads by 61 points.61
LucerneNew York
Score2889
Drinking venues within 4 km2024,159
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1512,015
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7548
Nightclubs within 4 km11192
Nature & day trips. New York leads by 14 points.14
LucerneNew York
Score2539
Protected land share 50 km %74
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10069
Park area within 2 km29 hectares134 hectares
Good for families. New York leads by 34 points.34
LucerneNew York
Score3872
Tourist attractions within 2 km1537
Park area within 2 km29 hectares134 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km17
Sights concentration. New York leads by 39 points.39
LucerneNew York
Score3574
Notable places within 2 km29268
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. New York leads by 8 points.8
LucerneNew York
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. New York leads by 5 points.5
LucerneNew York
Score5358
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C4.5 °C to 30.1 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm74 mm to 112 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
New York
5
6
10
16
22
27
30
29
25
19
13
7
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
New York
6
4
5
8
13
18
22
23
21
17
13
9
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
New York
83
74
102
97
91
103
107
112
98
97
80
104
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
New York
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
New York
No sunshine record

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). New York: 1991-2020 normals, LaGuardia Airport (12.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneNew York
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 10 m
€459-498
JFK · 21 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 25 m
€474-553
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€236-237
LGA · 13 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 30 m
€445-517
JFK · 21 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 55 m
€439-457
1 stop
JFK · 21 km
BerlinBER
1 h 25 m
€140-176
ZRH · 49 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
JFK · 21 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 40 m
no fares
EWR · 14 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 30 m
€989-1136
JFK · 21 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureLucerneNew York
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation436 m25 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)21 km from centre188 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneNew York
City population86,2348,804,190
People per km²2,9637,256
Museums within 10 km14157
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre46132
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne 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. 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.