VacationSelector

Rotterdam or Valencia?

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

Your match

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on good for families and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
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.

RotterdamValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 30 points.30
RotterdamValencia
Score3767
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km2212
Coast distance24 km3 km
Water distance24 km3 km
Places to eat. Valencia leads by 6 points.6
RotterdamValencia
Score7278
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8621,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4633
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
RotterdamValencia
Score6055
Museums within 10 km4159
Museums within 2 km of centre2026
Share of museums within 2 km %4944
Unesco sites within 50 km52
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 21 points.21
RotterdamValencia
Score4970
Drinking venues within 4 km5421,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre378957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7063
Nightclubs within 4 km40108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 11 points.11
RotterdamValencia
Score4253
Protected land share 50 km %1010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %7964
Park area within 2 km61 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 20 points.20
RotterdamValencia
Score6242
Tourist attractions within 2 km2712
Park area within 2 km61 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km80
Sights concentration. Valencia leads by 1 points.1
RotterdamValencia
Score5152
Notable places within 2 km7478
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia leads by 13 points.13
RotterdamValencia
Score5871
Price level global79.260.8
Daily budget€181€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 28 points.28
RotterdamValencia
Score5684
Monthly daytime high6.2 °C to 22.1 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall42 mm to 85 mm7 mm to 70 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
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

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). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRotterdamValencia
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
VLC · 9 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
3 h 15 m
€110-130
1 stop
ALC · 133 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 km
PalmaPMI
2 h 20 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
1 h 0 m
€32-53
VLC · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
3 h 50 m
€96-151
ALC · 133 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 35 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
2 h 0 m
€72-115
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 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

MeasureRotterdamValencia
Official languageDutchSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 911112
Elevation10 m15 m
Main airportRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureRotterdamValencia
City population664,311840,792
People per km²2,0806,242
Museums within 10 km4046
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km52
Distinct cuisines in the centre7792
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Rotterdam or Valencia 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.