Hungary’s biggest hotel closes soon

The country’s largest hotel, the 499-room Danubius Hotel Hungaria, will close its doors for four months from November.

The closure is expected to last from November 1, 2022 to February 28, 2023, turizmus.com said.

The decision had to be taken because current occupancy forecasts do not favour the hotel’s opening for the winter season, according to an official statement from the hotel chain.

From November, the company will welcome guests in eight different hotels in Budapest, Bükk and Győr. They have already started to inform guests who have booked for the winter period in the hotel that has been sentenced to a forced break and they will be accommodated in other Danubius Hotels’ Budapest establishments.

In addition, Danubius has announced that the largest hotels in Hungary and Budapest will be taken out of operation. The company is optimistic, estimating that the closures would only last until the end of February, but some association executives say the hardest period will only arrive in the first three to four months of next year.

As we wrote before, with energy prices skyrocketing, more and more rural hotels are announcing forced holidays, with some market estimates suggesting that one in four hotels will close for the heating season. Even with a full house, they could barely cover the overheads, which half the house does not cover at all. It is mainly rural hotels that will be hit by the wave of closures, due to the expected drop in domestic tourism in the winter months.

Read alsoPHOTOS: one of Hungary’s most astonishing luxury castle hotels close