Budapest among the most dynamically growing tourist destinations in Europe

According to mno.hu, Budapest seems to be a more and more attractive destination among tourists. Based on a recent report by Euromonitor, Budapest was visited by 3,505,000 foreigners last year, which puts it into the 55^th place on the list featuring 100 cities.

The world’s most visited city is Hong Kong, followed by Bangkok and London. When it comes to Europe, the most visited cities are London, Paris and Rome. This is probably not surprising for most people, however, regarding the increase in traffic, Budapest almost made it into the top three cities.

After Heraklion, Athens and Artvin, Budapest is listed as the fourth strongest performing tourist destination. When evaluating the growth of cities, the researches took into consideration stays that were longer than one day but shorter than one year.

Experts think that the success of Budapest lies in its affordability and security.

The researchers also took into consideration the effects of terrorism on tourism. This is how they explain the weak performance of Brussels, Paris, Nice and Istanbul.

Most of us love to travel, but there’s another side to the coin: the locals. For instance, the population of Venice is constantly decreasing because locals are fed up with the 28 million tourists that visit the city every year.

When it comes to Budapest, the biggest complaint concerns the consequences of party tourism. The dwellers of the 7^th district that live in the most frequented party quarter are similarly fed up with the constant jangle, dirt and intoxicated foreigners, so many of them move to different parts of the city.

Nonetheless, the always improving touristic indices are quite beneficial for the Hungarian economy.

Based on the data of the Hungarian Touristic Agency, tourists spent almost 1,300 billion forints (~EUR 4.1 billion) in Hungary last year, which equals the 3.7% of the Hungarian GDP.

It seems like more and more people realise that dynamic increase comes at a price. It’s quite reassuring that UN has declared 2017 the year of sustainable tourism in order to highlight the importance of tourism’s contribution economic, social and environmental development.

Source: https://mno.hu/