Hungarian hotels fill up for holidays

Budapest, December 28 (MTI) – Wellness hotels around Lake Balaton had no vacancies for Christmas, and the country’s best commercial accommodations are expected to fill up for New Year’s Eve, too, daily Magyar Nemzet said today.

More Hungarian families than ever this year decided to spend Christmas at a wellness hotel rather than at home, filling up hotels around Lake Balaton as well as in other cities and towns, the paper said.

Henrik Hoffmann, who heads the Tourism Destination Management Association for the Balaton region, told Sonline.hu that earlier, reservations were made for the time between the two holidays and were concentrated around New Year’s Eve, but this year the season started practically from Christmas Eve.

About 70 percent of guests at wellness hotels this holiday season are Hungarian, thanks in large part to the SZEP recreation card, part of a unified voucher programme launched by the government, Istvan Kovacs, who heads the Hungarian Hotel and Restaurant Association, told the paper. Hungarians have used the card to make purchases of more than 106 billion forints at commercial accommodations since its introduction.

Source: http://hungarymatters.hu/