VacationSelector

Manila or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Manila
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

ManilaRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Manila leads by 39 points.39
ManilaRotterdam
Score7637
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km322
Coast distance2 km24 km
Water distance2 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 14 points.14
ManilaRotterdam
Score5872
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,015862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1746
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 10 points.10
ManilaRotterdam
Score5060
Museums within 10 km7741
Museums within 2 km of centre2320
Share of museums within 2 km %3049
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Manila leads by 12 points.12
ManilaRotterdam
Score6149
Drinking venues within 4 km1,082542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre374378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3570
Nightclubs within 4 km3640
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 13 points.13
ManilaRotterdam
Score2942
Protected land share 50 km %410
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7879
Park area within 2 km54 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
ManilaRotterdam
Score6062
Tourist attractions within 2 km3727
Park area within 2 km54 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km38
Sights concentration. Manila leads by 1 points.1
ManilaRotterdam
Score5251
Notable places within 2 km7974
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Manila leads by 32 points.32
ManilaRotterdam
Score9058
Price level global33.779.2
Daily budget—€181
Year-round weather. Manila leads by 5 points.5
ManilaRotterdam
Score6156
Monthly daytime high30.5 °C to 34.6 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall24 mm to 564 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months40
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
Manila
31
31
33
35
34
33
32
31
31
32
31
31
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Manila
27
27
28
29
30
30
29
29
29
29
28
28
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Manila
26
24
40
36
220
314
487
564
509
297
152
109
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Manila
11
12
12
13
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Manila
No sunshine record
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. Manila: 1991-2020 normals, Science Garden (6 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 fromManilaRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
13 h 20 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 45 m
€428-448
MNL · 11 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
16 h 45 m
no fares
MNL · 11 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
TokyoHND, NRT
4 h 10 m
€304-317
MNL · 11 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
2 h 50 m
€210-218
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
SeoulICN, GMP
3 h 45 m
€191-223
MNL · 11 km
10 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 0 m
€128-135
MNL · 11 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
3 h 35 m
€159-184
1 stop
MNL · 11 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
3 h 30 m
€154-174
MNL · 11 km
13 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
3 h 15 m
€205-213
MNL · 11 km
11 h 30 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 2026-08 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

MeasureManilaRotterdam
Official languageEnglish, Filipino, TaglishDutch
CurrencyPhilippine Peso (PHP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+8UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 911
Elevation9 m10 m
Main airportNinoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)11 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureManilaRotterdam
City population1,902,590664,311
People per km²76,1042,080
Museums within 10 km2740
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre3977
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

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