In March 2015, the remarkable tourism turnover growth at accommodation establishments continued: the number of guests and tourism nights soared by 9 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively, while the revenues at accommodation establishments grew by 9.4 percent year-on-year. In terms of concrete data, in the observed period 630 thousand guests spent 1.5 tourism nights at accommodation establishments, and respective revenues totalled HUF 11.8bn in the third month of the year.

In Q1 2015, 1.7 guests spent 3.9 million tourism nights at accommodation establishments, where some HUF 33bn has been registered as revenues, up by 15 percent year-on-year. As another positive signal, the hotel efficiency indicator RevPAR (revenue-per-available-room) also improved significantly compared to January-March 2014. While the average gross price of a hotel room was 3.1 percent higher in this period, gross RevPAR increased even more, by 7.2 percent. Accordingly, accommodation services providers -- besides having increased the booking and occupancy ratio -- have also managed to be more profitable than last year.

The domestic tourism sector posted marked growth of some 9 percent in the first quarter, while tourism traffic was higher in every region. SZÉP Card holders spent HUF 2.4bn at accommodation establishments, while the amount transferred to SZÉP Cards until the end of March 2015 soared by 20 percent in comparison to the corresponding period of the previous year.

The prevalent two-way trend in international tourist arrivals that has dominated this year appears to have continued: while the number of Russian tourists is falling, that of Britons is rising sharply. In the first three months of the year, the most significant sender country continued to be Germany, followed by Great Britain, Austria and Italy. Russia, among the top three half a year ago, has slipped back to rank five. Among the largest sender countries, the highest arrival growth figures were posted in the first quarter by the United Kingdom (41.5 percent), the United States (26.1 percent) and Italy (15.8 percent), but the number of arrivals from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and France also showed double-digit growth of 11.2 percent, 12.6 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively.

It is also encouraging that tourism traffic from Austria has also picked up, gaining 7.1 percent.

It has to be noted that the hopefully transitory slump in the number of Russian guests has been sufficiently offset by the increase in the number of arrivals from other sender countries.

(Ministry for National Economy)