VacationSelector

Macau or Ottawa?

Two destinations compared in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

The Grand Lisboa above the Macau skyline, Macau
Macau

Photo: tian Jin, Pexels License

Parliament Hill across the Ottawa River, Ottawa
Ottawa

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

Your match

Macau
46
match

Wins on food and drink and shopping with your weighting.

Ottawa
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on nature and the outdoors and families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Our verdict on each category, scored 0 to 100 against fixed benchmark cities.

MacauOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
Food & drink. Macau leads by 32 points.32
Culture & sights. Macau and Ottawa are level on 62.
Nightlife. Macau leads by 5 points.5
Nature & outdoors. Ottawa leads by 63 points.63
Day trips. Ottawa leads by 3 points.3
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 20 points.20
Getting around. Ottawa leads by 2 points.2
Shopping & style. Macau leads by 18 points.18
Affordability. Macau leads by 4 points.4
Live music & performing arts. Ottawa leads by 16 points.16
Wellness & relaxation. Ottawa leads by 15 points.15
0255075100

What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Macau and Ottawa.

When should you go?

Pick the month you can travel and see both cities side by side. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Climate figures for July
JulyMacauOttawa
Daytime high32 °C27 °C
Night-time low26 °C16 °C
Rainfall in the month281 mm82 mm
Sunshine7 hours a dayNo figure
Sea temperature29 °CNo sea
Daylight13 hours a day15 hours a day

The whole year

Each row is shaded against that destination’s own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that figure 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
Macau
19
19
22
25
29
31
32
32
31
29
25
20
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Macau
19
19
20
23
26
28
29
29
28
27
24
21
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Macau
34
42
78
160
285
369
281
338
233
71
38
32
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Macau
11
11
12
13
13
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Macau
4
3
3
3
4
5
7
6
6
6
5
5
Ottawa
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Macau: 1991-2020 normals, Taipa (3.9 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromMacauOttawa
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
15 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 41 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
12 h 0 m
€570-666
1 stop
HKG · 41 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
15 h 55 m
no fares
HKG · 41 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
15 h 25 m
no fares
HKG · 41 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
12 h 45 m
no fares
HKG · 41 km
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 55 m
€586-713
1 stop
HKG · 41 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
BostonBOS, PSM
15 h 45 m
no fares
HKG · 41 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureMacauOttawa
Official languagePortuguese, Cantonese, Standard ChineseFrench, English
CurrencyPataca (MOP)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsFGM220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number999911
Elevation22 m70 m
Main airportMacau International Airport (MFM)7 km from centre41 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year-11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMacauOttawa
City population682,1001,017,449
People per km²5,916366
Museums within 10 km2820
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Swim season, months above 21 °C8 months-

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Macau or Ottawa somewhere new.

Browse every destination

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). 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. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate and flight figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-10-27. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.