Hungary’s tourism traffic continued to grow in the month of October 2014: the number of guests was up by 7.5 percent and that of tourism nights increased to almost 2 million. Steadily rising tourism traffic has also resulted in higher revenues: accommodation fees were up sharply, by 18 percent over the past one year, and totalled HUF 17.5bn. The expansion in October was also bolstered by the autumn school holiday and the subsequent long weekend, but various tourism development projects, improvement in the quality of services and the SZÉP Card have also added to the sector’s growth.

In the tenth month of the year, the number of domestic guests and respective tourism nights soared by 12.4 percent and 12 percent, respectively. As a consequence, accommodation fee revenues generated by domestic guests jumped by 23.6 percent in comparison to October 2013. The number of foreign guests and respective tourism nights gained 2.7 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively. Thanks to that, accommodation fee revenues generated by foreign guests increased outstandingly, by more than 15 percent. As a whole, 815 thousand guests spent some 2 million tourism nights at accommodation establishments in October 2014 which constitutes increases of 7.5 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively, year-on-year.

Data from the first ten months of the year show that some tourism sector indicators for this year are set to improve further and occasionally register even double-digit growth: for example, accommodation fees from domestic guests were up by more than 15 percent and those from foreign guests also increased by almost 10 percent. The fact that in the period January-October tourism traffic was higher in every Hungarian region is signalling balanced growth. The largest increases were registered in Southern Great Plain, Northern Hungary and Northern Great Plain.

In line with the performance of the domestic tourism sector, the utilization of SZÉP Cards also accelerated: SZÉP Card payments totalled HUF 14.2bn at accommodation establishments, up by 10 percent since the same period of the previous year. Within that, turnover in October was HUF 1.2bn, constituting growth of 3.5 percent year-on-year.

(Ministry for National Economy)