VacationSelector

Lucerne or Rotterdam?

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.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat 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.

LucerneRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
LucerneRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1622
Coast distance669 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 25 points.25
LucerneRotterdam
Score4772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre269862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2546
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 20 points.20
LucerneRotterdam
Score4060
Museums within 10 km2341
Museums within 2 km of centre1320
Share of museums within 2 km %5749
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 21 points.21
LucerneRotterdam
Score2849
Drinking venues within 4 km202542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7570
Nightclubs within 4 km1140
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 17 points.17
LucerneRotterdam
Score2542
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km29 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 24 points.24
LucerneRotterdam
Score3862
Tourist attractions within 2 km1527
Park area within 2 km29 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 16 points.16
LucerneRotterdam
Score3551
Notable places within 2 km2974
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 23 points.23
LucerneRotterdam
Score3558
Price level global110.579.2
Daily budget€248€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
LucerneRotterdam
Score5356
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

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). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneRotterdam
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 45 m
€204-248
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 25 m
€207-228
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureLucerneRotterdam
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshDutch
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation436 m10 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneRotterdam
City population86,234664,311
People per km²2,9632,080
Museums within 10 km1440
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre4677
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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