This Year’s Tourist Season Ends with Exceptional Figures

Neither Lake Balaton nor Hungarian tourism has ever had a better summer season than this year, said the President of the Hungarian Tourism Agency. The 17 million guest nights exceeded the numbers of 2019, a record year in Hungarian tourism.

“Domestic tourism was kept artificially high and foreign tourism artificially low, but the borders that were closed due to COVID have now opened and outbound tourism has started to flow in from all over the world,” highlighted Zoltán Guller, president of the Hungarian Tourism Agency, summing up the season, writes Világgazdaság.

The fact is that this year’s peak season brought 17 million guest nights, exceeding the figures of last year and even those of 2019,”

Guller stressed. More than six million guests arrived at Hungarian accommodation establishments in the three summer months, according to data from the National Tourism Data Supply Center. This year’s summer traffic is one percent higher than last year’s high season, and 6.3 percent higher than in 2019.

The total number of tourists from abroad was up by almost 15 percent compared to 2022, totaling 2.6 million.

The strongest summer month, August, saw 6.7 million overnight stays in commercial, private, and other accommodation, also exceeding last year’s figures.

Total gross revenue in commercial accommodation was HUF 84 billion (EUR 217 million), up 25 percent year-on-year at current prices.

The World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August were a huge success, boosting the Hungarian capital’s guest numbers, said Gyula Kincses, President of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. He noted that the number of overnight stays by foreign visitors from Australia and Oceania increased by more than 120 percent, while those from Africa and Asia rose by almost 60 and 50 percent respectively compared to August 2022.

In terms of domestic overnight stays, the Lake Balaton region was the most popular in August 2023. Hotels welcomed six percent more guests nationwide in the peak season and five percent more guests in the Lake Balaton region compared to last year.

Compared to the summer of 2019, hotels hosted more guests, and not only foreigners (plus four percent), but also more domestic tourists (plus five percent) spent their holidays on the shores of our largest lake.

This year’s high season had a very difficult start, but it proved that domestic guests are still present in Hungarian tourism, including at Lake Balaton.

In Budapest, tourists spent almost four million nights in hotels between June and August, 13 percent more than in the summer of 2022, and 99 percent closer to the record level of 2019, despite the loss of approximately 800,000 nights due to the war booked by Russian tourists.

In January-September, there were almost 33 million guest nights, 1.2 percent above the 2022 figure nationwide.

Above inflation, hotel revenues grew by 31 percent, with Budapest taking an above-average share of the increase, the Hungarian Tourism Agency’s president stressed.

Pre-booking data for November-December already show a three percent increase in Hungarian tourism, and based on the strategy set out before COVID, 50 million overnight stays could be reached by 2030, with an expected 20 million tourists, Guller concluded.

Via Világgazdaság, Featured image via Pixabay