Tourism model to change in Budapest?

Viktor Orbán emphasised the need for a model change at a conference on Wednesday. He believes that Budapest will not be competitive with the 10% domestic tourism ratio and stressed that he was waiting for proposals from trade unions.

At a conference titled “Hungary is Restarting!”, Viktor Orbán said that looking at the business models of the greatest capitals of tourism, Paris or Rome, it is clear that although the number of foreigners is higher there, there is a more promising proportion of foreign and domestic tourists.

90 per cent of Budapest’s tourism is based on foreigners and only 10 per cent on Hungarians.

In his opinion, this ratio will not be able to compete. He emphasised that there would be no return to an international trend in which any major city that wants to make money from tourism can afford to “neglect its own citizens”. According to Viktor Orbán, Budapest must also build touristic capabilities that can be utilised by rural Hungarians. This will require a change in the tourism business model, he said. He added that he hopes the Budapest Chamber or the professional organisations in charge of this issue will contact the government with their proposals, wrote turizmusonline.hu.

“The pandemic has kicked an industry to the curb that two years ago grew twice as fast as the GDP, and in January and February last year, this rate was four times as fast. The sector that provided the livelihood of hundreds and thousands of people, made up more than 10 per cent of the GDP, and was able to grow at a rate that exceeded both the European and world averages took an enormous hit,”

Zoltán Guller, CEO of the Hungarian Tourism Agency, began his presentation.

Turizmus Online previously wrote about the fact that professionals well-acquainted with the structure of the domestic and international markets and its dynamism do not believe in the government’s idea that domestic tourism could lure people away from going abroad.