Guest nights, turnover up at Hungary hotels in first half of 2015

Budapest, August 21 (MTI) – Both the number of guest nights and gross turnover continued to grow at Hungarian hotels in the first half of this year despite a fall in the number of tourists arriving from Russia and Ukraine, according to a report published by the Hungarian Hotel and Restaurant Association.

    The number of guest nights increased by 5.9 percent from a year earlier to 8.357 million in the first half of 2015. Hungarian tourists spent 3.547 million guest nights, up 8.2 percent, and foreign guest nights rose by 4.3 percent to 4.783 millio. Guest nights spent in Budapest were up 7.9 percent, totalling 3.657 million.

The average occupancy rate at Hungarian hotels was 49.2 percent, up 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier. The average gross room rate was 16,779 forints, 5.6 percent higher than a year earlier.

Hungarian hotels had total gross revenue of 143.1 billion forints in the first half, up 9.8 percent.

The number of visitors from the UK increased by 24.2 percent, from the US by 13 percent, from Italy by 10.7 percent, from France by 7.9 percent, from the Czech Republic by 6.6 percent, from Poland by 5.6 percent and from Austria by 5.4 percent. From neighbouring countries, the number of tourists from Slovakia rose by 13.6 percent, from Serbia by 8 percent and from Croatia by 7.5 percent. The number of tourists from Germany, traditionally the biggest market, fell by 6.5 percent, in line with the trend of recent years.

The number of visitors from Russia and Ukraine dropped by 30 percent and 16 percent, respectively, in the first half of 2015. The association said this was the result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters