VacationSelector

Seoul or Valletta?

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

Your match

Seoul
✓ Best match
63
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Valletta
60
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.

SeoulValletta
Beaches & swimming. Valletta leads by 62 points.62
SeoulValletta
Score1577
Swim season months26
Beaches 10 km122
Coast distance28 km0 km
Water distance28 km0 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 27 points.27
SeoulValletta
Score8558
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,559416
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 22 points.22
SeoulValletta
Score8361
Museums within 10 km20346
Museums within 2 km of centre9029
Share of museums within 2 km %4463
Unesco sites within 50 km53
Nightlife. Seoul leads by 33 points.33
SeoulValletta
Score8047
Drinking venues within 4 km3,291522
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,630250
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5048
Nightclubs within 4 km2927
Nature & day trips. Valletta leads by 14 points.14
SeoulValletta
Score3246
Protected land share 50 km %1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %956
Park area within 2 km126 hectares24 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 33 points.33
SeoulValletta
Score7946
Tourist attractions within 2 km6232
Park area within 2 km126 hectares24 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km81
Sights concentration. Valletta leads by 2 points.2
SeoulValletta
Score5961
Notable places within 2 km118133
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Seoul leads by 3 points.3
SeoulValletta
Score7269
Price level global59.462.8
Daily budget€129
Year-round weather. Valletta leads by 18 points.18
SeoulValletta
Score6179
Monthly daytime high2 °C to 30 °C15.7 °C to 31.9 °C
Monthly rainfall18 mm to 422 mm0 mm to 90 mm
Dry months46
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
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Valletta
16
16
17
20
24
29
32
32
29
25
21
17
Sea temperature, °C
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Valletta
16
15
15
16
19
22
25
27
26
24
21
18
Rainfall, mm
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Valletta
80
72
39
19
10
5
0
10
63
74
90
85
Daylight, hours per day
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Valletta
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5
Valletta
6
6
7
8
10
11
12
11
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre). Valletta: 1991-2020 normals, Luqa (5.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSeoulValletta
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
3 h 10 m
€91-131
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 15 m
€632-735
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
1 h 30 m
€37-71
MLA · 6 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 10 m
€687-728
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
2 h 45 m
€99-132
1 stop
MLA · 6 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
10 h 45 m
€646-685
ICN · 49 km
2 h 35 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 5 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€62-92
MLA · 6 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 0 m
€493-591
ICN · 49 km
2 h 15 m
€177-222
MLA · 6 km
MunichMUC
10 h 40 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
2 h 20 m
€165-259
MLA · 6 km
BarcelonaBCN
11 h 55 m
€680-750
2 stops
ICN · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€56-95
MLA · 6 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
8 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 km
5 h 25 m
no fares
MLA · 6 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
€770-823
ICN · 49 km
9 h 20 m
no fares
MLA · 6 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

MeasureSeoulValletta
Official languageKorean, Korean Sign LanguageEnglish, Maltese
CurrencyWon (KRW)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF220 V, 60 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 119, fire 119112
Elevation38 m56 m
Main airportIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinationsMalta International Airport (MLA)6 km from centre109 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days14 days

By the numbers

MeasureSeoulValletta
City population9,668,4656,444
People per km²15,9738,055
Museums within 10 km8015
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km53
Distinct cuisines in the centre15655
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months6 months

Where else could you go?

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