According to hotel reservation data, there will be a very strong demand for domestic tourism in the summer. Last year’s outstanding statistics can only be weakened by the fact that Hungarians are willing to travel abroad. According to József Szigetvári, CEO of Szallas.hu, the prices will be a bit higher, the quality of the services will follow.
Mandiner conducted an interview with the expert to find out what we can expect from summer tourism.
We can expect a very similar summer as it was in 2020, and in periods like the end of July or around August 20, Lake Balaton will certainly be full.
“The tendency shows that people eally want to travel, many also want to make up for delayed trips abroad.”
The experts says they see that guests are looking for safe accommodations, they want to vacation safely. Similar to last year, for the first time the small guest houses and apartments are running out, guests mostly book cancellable accommodations where they don’t have to pay in advance.
This summer we will be one step closer to the feeling of self-forgotting relaxation we have experienced in pre-covid summers.
In the case of the countryside, visitors can come mainly from nearby countries: Romania, the Czech Republic, and Poland.
However, the top Hungarian tourist destinations that are attractive to foreigners will not be restructured. If there is no next wave of the epidemic, the influx of foreign guests can start again.
Budapest will not have outstanding tourism this summer, but there will be one or two major events, such as the European Football Championship and others, that will attract foreign visitors who can enter with immunity certificates.
This could mean survival for hotels in Budapest, which have been without guests since March 2020.
In the last month, foreign bookings have started to arrive, mainly from Romania, the Czech Republic and Poland, countries with which Hungary already has an interstate agreement on the mutual acceptance of cards.
The level of 2019 can be reached by Budapest tourism in 2022 at the earliest, the year 2021 will be only a slow recovery. By September-October, if there is no next wave, life may return to normal, but traffic will still be about 50 percent below 2019 levels.
It is quite clear that the tourist weight of the Lake Balaton region will be strong this year as well, but there is Eger or Hajdúszoboszló as a spa town – these will still be sought-after destinations as well.
But there has been a new trend for years: the surroundings of Lake Tisza are becoming more and more popular destinations every year.