VacationSelector

Melbourne or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Melbourne
✓ Best match
60
match

Wins on nightlife and year-round weather with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money 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.

MelbourneRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Melbourne leads by 18 points.18
MelbourneRotterdam
Score5537
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1922
Coast distance4 km24 km
Water distance4 km24 km
Places to eat. Melbourne leads by 3 points.3
MelbourneRotterdam
Score7572
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,888862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2946
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 11 points.11
MelbourneRotterdam
Score4960
Museums within 10 km4241
Museums within 2 km of centre2420
Share of museums within 2 km %5749
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Melbourne leads by 25 points.25
MelbourneRotterdam
Score7449
Drinking venues within 4 km1,921542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,200378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6270
Nightclubs within 4 km12440
Nature & day trips. Melbourne leads by 1 points.1
MelbourneRotterdam
Score4342
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8179
Park area within 2 km166 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
MelbourneRotterdam
Score6062
Tourist attractions within 2 km2627
Park area within 2 km166 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Melbourne leads by 6 points.6
MelbourneRotterdam
Score5751
Notable places within 2 km10374
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 8 points.8
MelbourneRotterdam
Score5058
Price level global90.279.2
Daily budget—€181
Year-round weather. Melbourne leads by 20 points.20
MelbourneRotterdam
Score7656
Monthly daytime high13.6 °C to 26.8 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall45 mm to 69 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
Melbourne
27
27
24
20
17
14
14
15
17
20
22
25
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Melbourne
20
21
20
18
15
13
12
11
12
14
17
19
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Melbourne
46
48
45
58
50
58
46
52
60
56
69
65
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Melbourne
15
14
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
15
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Melbourne
9
7
7
6
5
4
4
6
6
7
7
9
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. Melbourne: 1991-2020 normals, Latrobe University / Kingsbury (13.1 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 fromMelbourneRotterdam
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
€856-961
2 stops
MEL · 19 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
Denpasar (Bali)DPS
5 h 50 m
€420-587
MEL · 19 km
15 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 5 m
€542-1650
1 stop
MEL · 19 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
7 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
13 h 0 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
15 h 40 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Hong KongHKG
9 h 25 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Kuala LumpurKUL, SZB
8 h 5 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
DohaDOH
14 h 45 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
17 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
3 h 15 m
€140-185
RTM · 5 km
SantiagoSCL
13 h 55 m
no fares
MEL · 19 km
14 h 45 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

MeasureMelbourneRotterdam
Official languageEnglishDutch
CurrencyAustralian Dollar (AUD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsI230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+10, UTC+11 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number000112 or 911
Elevation31 m10 m
Main airportMelbourne Airport (MEL)19 km from centre66 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureMelbourneRotterdam
City population5,350,705664,311
People per km²5352,080
Museums within 10 km4240
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre8677
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

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