Hotel swap raises eyebrows: How EU delegates were redirected to hotel linked to Orbán’s son-in-law Tiborcz

During the 2023 EU summit in Budapest, the Hungarian government offered five hotels to the participating delegations, including the Dorothea Hotel. This building is owned by István Tiborcz, Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law. The Hungarian organisers were particularly active in promoting this hotel, highlighting “special packages” for foreign guests.

The Hungarian government assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2023, during which a series of prestigious international events took place in Budapest. According to Telex, the Hungarian side also coordinated the hosting of guest delegations and, in some cases, the interests of economic operators close to the government were brought to the fore.

During the visit of the Finnish Prime Minister, for instance, the delegation was directed to a hotel owned by István Tiborcz, the son-in-law of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The Finnish delegation’s trip to the Dorothea

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and his entourage did not originally choose Tiborcz’s hotel. However, the organisers of the Hungarian EU presidency claimed that the original hotel (likely the Ritz-Carlton Budapest) was unavailable due to overbooking. The delegation was then redirected to the Dorothea Hotel, where they paid more than HUF 1.1 million (approximately EUR 2,700) for a single night.

The Finnish government made the details of the booking public at the request of Direkt36. The invoices were not issued by the hotel but by a Hungarian company called Jet Travel Ltd. This company is a permanent partner of the Hungarian government in the organisation of international travel and acts on the instructions of the organisers. According to the Finnish side, the referral to the Dorothea was also made through this channel.

Jet Travel and the Dorothea Hotel

One of the owners of Jet Travel is Zoltán Gál Pál, whose brother, Levente András Gál, formerly served as State Secretary in the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice. The company has secured several government framework contracts worth billions of forints between 2019 and 2024 to manage diplomatic trips, conferences, and other international events.