In June 2015, more than 1 million guests spent 2.5 million tourism nights at Hungarian accommodation establishments. The number of guest and tourism nights grew by 6.7 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, year-on-year. The volume of guest spending on accommodation was 13 percent higher compared to the same period of the previous year, while accommodation revenues exceeded HUF 20.5bn. Concurrently, occupancy ratios and RevPAR also increased.

Hotel occupancy ratio improved by 4 percentage points to 58 percent, while average prices also grew by 6 percent. Rev PAR (revenue per available room) jumped by almost 14 percent.

Steady domestic tourism growth that has prevailed over the past years was stable also in June 2015: 553 thousand domestic guests spent some 1.3 million tourism nights at commercial accommodations, which corresponds to 6.3 percent and 3.9 percent year-on-year growth, respectively. Revenues generated by domestic guests at accommodation establishments increased by 13.8 percent compared to the same period of the previous year.

The latest SZÉP Card data confirm that the system is a major factor within the Hungarian tourism sector. In June 2015, turnover from SZÉP Card grew by 5.4 percent to HUF 1.5bn at 2200 accommodation establishments. Inbound tourism showed steady growth in the past months, including June: the number of foreign guests jumped by 7.1 percent to 474 thousand, while they spent 1.24 million tourism nights in the country (+5.9 percent). The growth in the number of international guests exceeded that of domestic tourists, as accommodation establishment revenues generated by the former group soared by 13 percent to HUF 13.2bn.

Out of the ten largest traditional sending countries, data show double-digit growth in case of five of them. The volume of tourism traffic was up by 21.4 percent from the United Kingdom, 20.9 percent from France, 17.2 percent from Poland, 11.8 percent from Italy and 10.7 percent from the United States.

Thanks to robust growth at the beginning of the year, data are also promising from the first half of the year: in this period, 4.42 million guests spent 10.45 tourism nights at accommodation establishments. The number of guests and tourism nights increased year-on-year by 7.9 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. It is especially noteworthy that despite the high base of the previous year guests spent 10.8 percent more, altogether HUF 88.3bn at accommodation establishments in the initial six months of the year.

(Ministry for National Economy)