VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Santiago?

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

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Santiago
55
match

Wins on year-round weather 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.

RotterdamSantiago
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
RotterdamSantiago
Score370
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance24 km89 km
Water distance24 km—
Places to eat. Rotterdam and Santiago are level on 72.
RotterdamSantiago
Score7272
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8621,317
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4632
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 15 points.15
RotterdamSantiago
Score6045
Museums within 10 km4187
Museums within 2 km of centre2030
Share of museums within 2 km %4934
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Santiago leads by 12 points.12
RotterdamSantiago
Score4961
Drinking venues within 4 km542912
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378542
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7059
Nightclubs within 4 km40112
Nature & day trips. Santiago leads by 10 points.10
RotterdamSantiago
Score4252
Protected land share 50 km %1017
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %79100
Park area within 2 km61 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 13 points.13
RotterdamSantiago
Score6249
Tourist attractions within 2 km2712
Park area within 2 km61 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km83
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
RotterdamSantiago
Score5148
Notable places within 2 km7462
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Santiago leads by 23 points.23
RotterdamSantiago
Score5881
Price level global79.246.2
Daily budget€181—
Year-round weather. Santiago leads by 29 points.29
RotterdamSantiago
Score5685
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C14.3 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm0 mm to 87 mm
Dry months08
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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Santiago
28
27
26
21
18
15
14
16
19
22
25
27
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Santiago
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Santiago
0
2
5
16
46
87
52
44
27
11
6
3
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Santiago
14
13
12
11
10
10
10
11
12
13
14
14
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Santiago
11
9
8
6
5
3
4
5
6
8
9
11

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre). Santiago: 1991-2020 normals, Santiago Q. Normal (3.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamSantiago
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
13 h 15 m
€799-1378
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
Buenos AiresEZE, AEP
14 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
2 h 0 m
€140-179
SCL · 14 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 45 m
€267-313
SCL · 14 km
LimaLIM
13 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
3 h 35 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
BogotaBOG
11 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
5 h 40 m
€340-367
1 stop
SCL · 14 km
Rio de JaneiroGIG, SDU, RRJ
11 h 55 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
9 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
SCL · 14 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
11 h 30 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
SCL · 14 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

MeasureRotterdamSantiago
Official languageDutchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Chilean Peso (CLP)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCL220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-4, UTC-3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911Police 133/134, ambulance 131, fire 132
Elevation10 m575 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsComodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL)14 km from centre68 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamSantiago
City population664,3116,257,516
People per km²2,0807,468
Museums within 10 km4054
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre7764
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rotterdam or Santiago 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.