The Hungarian Tourism Agency published its numbers for the year 2022. The main takeaway from the data is that the tourism industry achieved higher numbers than anyone had expected.

Tourism Gained Momentum after Covid Scare

Zoltán Guller, the president of the agency, said that compared to the previous year, the performance of tourism grew by 40 per cent. That means that it almost reached the numbers from 2019, only lagging behind by a mere five per cent. He added that last year 14.2 million visitors spent almost 40 million nights in the country. About 4 million stayed in the capital, and over 10 million spent their holiday in the countryside. Hotels across the country were booked to around 47 per cent of their capacities. Tourists to the countryside were mostly domestic travellers from within Hungary, making up 73 per cent of the visitors, while in Budapest, 82 per cent of tourists were foreign.

Balaton the Most Popular, Germans Spend the Most

The most popular destinations were Lake Balaton and Budapest. Hungarians mostly visited the Balaton area in the summer, where they spent around 8.8 million nights—the second place in the domestic rankings went for the Mátra-Bükk region, making up 2.6 million nights. The city that saw more visitors than any other was, unsurprisingly, Budapest. Guller added that foreign tourists are starting to return to the country: most visitors arrived from Germany, Czechia, Romania, the United Kingdom, and Poland. He pointed out that the reason for the industry slightly trailing behind the 2019 numbers is that the number of visitors from the United States, Russia and China was falling short this year.

Looking at spending, Germany holds the top spot. According to the data, German tourists generated an income of 35 billion forints for the country. On this list, the US is the second, followed by the UK in third.

People Ready to Spend More

The revenue generated from accommodations reached 668 billion forints in 2022. Even when taking inflation into consideration, this is 52 per cent higher than the previous year. The average price of a room was 29,298 forints, which means prices rose about 15 per cent compared to 2021. Guller added that owners of SZÉP-Cards spent 385 billion forints, five per cent more than in 2022, and twice as much as they spent in 2019. In the country, 2.5 million people have SZÉP-Cards—they currently hold a combined 105 billion forints in funds.

Optimistic Forecasts for 2023

Guller also expressed optimism about the data from this January, which he found quite promising. It shows that by 27 January, there were already 1.5 million nights spent in the country by tourists. For the next few days, they expect over 200 thousand additional guests. The numbers are showing a 100 thousand increase compared to the same time last year.

Tourism is on an upward trajectory, and unless the circumstances drastically change, the performance of the industry will exceed even the numbers from 2019, he stated.