Tourists need to be beware of the illegal hotels of Budapest

Photo: www.facebook.com/spiceofeurope

In the last few months, several hotels of Budapest were found operating without permission. The phenomenon is severe and causes expensive damages in the city centre; nearly millions.

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24.hu reported that Zsolt Becsós’ (politician of FIDESZ) hotel-complex in Nagymező Street (Andrássy Avenue) was advertised as a hotel, but they never asked for permission to operate from the local government of the district. Since then, Becsó left the business and turned out that his illegal hotel business is not as rare as it was thought to be.

Several other hotels, apartments, and motels were found operating without any license in the city centre of the capital. This means that the necessary taxes are not paid for the local governments of Budapest.

These hotels are easily recognised through the internet. Major accommodation websites like booking.com usually advertise these places, but in real life the information online and the actual database of the hotel is different. This means that while the website gives you the exact address of the hotel, it is somewhere else in the city itself. Also, the number of rooms and beds cannot be compared to the websites’ information and at the sites of local governments’ the hotel is not registered.

Most of these illegally operating hotels were found in Districts V, VI and VIII, for example, Fővám Square, Museum Boulevard, Szemere Street, Bajza Street, Futó Street, and Práter Street.

Finding these illegal hotels is not easy as they do not have a precise location advertised. The Hungarian Tourism Agency and other organisations are working on a possible solution to stop the spreading of the hotels to the outskirts of Budapest.

The most effective solution would be only to allow hotels advertised on the most visited accommodation websites which have proper and valid registrations.

Featured image: www.facebook.com/spiceofeurope