Now that they have come to a close, it is perhaps a good time to sit back and take stock of the FINA World Aquatics Championships. To that end, surveys have been conducted to measure Hungarians and visitors’ reactions to the huge sporting event.
Four out of five visitors said they would recommend that their friends make a trip to Hungary as well. Two-thirds of foreigners who visited Hungary during the 2017 FINA World Aquatics Championships between July 14 and 30 definitely plan to return to the country, a survey by the Hungarian Tourism Agency showed.
The FINA Championships drew tourists to Hungary who may have otherwise never visited the country, the head of the tourism agency said at a press conference in the Duna Arena, one of the main venues of the event in Budapest. The average stay of visitors during the period rose to 9 days from 2.4, Zoltán Guller noted. The FINA Championships, the biggest international sporting event ever hosted by the country, attracted around 485,000 spectators.
The leaders of the International Swimming Federation (FINA) expressed “maximum satisfaction” with the championships after all. FINA President Julio Maglione called the event the “best ever” championships in the federation’s history.
What do Hungarians, whose country played host to the event, think of all this? Four fifths of Hungarians say hosting the world aquatics championships was ‘good idea’ Fully 80 percent of Hungarians asked said that hosting the recent world aquatics championships was a good idea, while merely 11 percent said the opposite, a representative survey by Nézőpont shows.
The pollster surveyed a sample of 1,000 just before the competitions that took place from July 14 to 30, and another 500 after the championships ended. In July the ratio of Hungarians disapproving of the country hosting the championships was 21 percent. The shift in approval reflects the success of the event, Nézőpont said. The rate of those satisfied with the way the championships were organised rose from 58 percent to 72 percent, the survey said. Over two thirds, 68 percent of Hungarians agreed that Hungary should apply to host other sports events of the same scale, Nézőpont said.
via: hungarymatters.hu
photos: nezopontintezet.hu; fanzone.fina-budapest2017.com; fina-budapest2017.com