VacationSelector

Ottawa or Tampa?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families with your weighting.

Tampa
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

OttawaTampa
Beaches & swimming. Tampa leads by 75 points.75
OttawaTampa
Score075
Swim season months08
Beaches 10 km910
Coast distance423 km1 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 10 points.10
OttawaTampa
Score6454
Restaurants within 2 km of centre684359
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3431
Museums & heritage. Ottawa leads by 5 points.5
OttawaTampa
Score3227
Museums within 10 km1513
Museums within 2 km of centre810
Share of museums within 2 km %5377
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 5 points.5
OttawaTampa
Score4439
Drinking venues within 4 km432324
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303227
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7070
Nightclubs within 4 km3526
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
OttawaTampa
Score4130
Protected land share 50 km %86
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10072
Park area within 2 km122 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 16 points.16
OttawaTampa
Score4630
Tourist attractions within 2 km113
Park area within 2 km122 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km15
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 29 points.29
OttawaTampa
Score5021
Notable places within 2 km7113
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
OttawaTampa
Score5443
Price level global84100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Tampa leads by 22 points.22
OttawaTampa
Score5375
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C21.5 °C to 32.6 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 mm36 mm to 228 mm
Dry months01
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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Tampa
22
23
25
28
31
32
32
33
32
29
26
23
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Tampa
18
18
20
23
26
28
30
30
29
27
23
20
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Tampa
66
66
64
64
67
187
197
228
156
60
36
65
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tampa
11
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
12
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Ottawa
No sunshine record
Tampa
7
7
9
10
11
10
9
10
8
8
7
7

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre). Tampa: 1991-2020 normals, Tampa International Airport (7.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOttawaTampa
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
CancunCUN
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€178-237
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 35 m
€176-204
1 stop
TPA · 8 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
Fort LauderdaleFLL, FXE
3 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
CalgaryYYC
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
TPA · 8 km
BostonBOS, PSM
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
TPA · 8 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

MeasureOttawaTampa
Official languageFrench, English
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number911911
Elevation70 m30 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsTampa International Airport (TPA)8 km from centre99 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaTampa
City population1,017,449384,959
People per km²366848
Museums within 10 km206
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre6247
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 Ottawa or Tampa 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). 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.