Hungarian travel agencies ready for a surge of foreign tourists
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The whole World has met with a threat never seen before, and it forced almost all of us to stay in our homes for more than an entire year now. People could not really travel abroad, and this may affect the number of people willing to travel, but also their budget on where to travel.
According to Vg, this is where Hungary might come into the picture. Although the situation is not bright at all, according to Hungarian Inbound Professionals’ Association (Mabeusz) member
travel agencies have been hoping to achieve the movement of 50,000 tourists who would have brought approximately HUF 1.8 billion (€ 5 million), but since this expected number, only 35,000 remained which barely hit the HUF 1 billion (€ 2.78 million) mark,
but nothing guarantees that it will not decrease further. As a base for comparison, the same group of agencies have arranged the travel of 260,000 tourists to Hungary, who have approximately spent around HUF 16 billion (€ 44.4 million) in 2019, one year before the coronavirus pandemic.
There are several problems to combat for these agencies but they are still hoping for a good summer season. One of the problems is that many major events, such as Balaton Sound and Telekom VOLT festival, not to mention other regional and cultural events have been postponed to 2022, some to 2023, and there are events scheduled only by 2024 with some even having been cancelled altogether.
If the tourism would get a green light, the Hungarian Inbound Professionals’ Association (Mabeusz) expects visitors mainly from the European Union, but there is some demand for travelling to Hungary from the British and Scandinavian markets.
With only a scarce number of visitors from overseas countries as the future of long-distance travel via aeroplanes is still uncertain due to the pandemic restrictions.
Until the travel agencies do not know exactly what the conditions to travel to Hungary or to Europe in general will be,