The long Pentecost weekend stretching into Monday brought about the first real signs of revival for the Hungarian hospitality sector, booking site Szallas.hu reports.
The portal’s PR manager Beatrix Trepess told business news site Pénzcentrum that the number of bookings rose by 42 percent compared with the same period of 2020 when the lockdown measures triggered by the first coronavirus wave were already in place.
Now, however, Hungary is continuing its gradual opening that began when the number of inoculated people reached 4 million in the country of just under 10 million.
The most popular destinations were Eger in northeastern Hungary with its medieval castle and charming little old town of Gyula in central Hungary, which boasts both a castle and a large lake as well as the Lake Balaton resort Siófok. Two urban centers — Pécs in southwest Hungary and the capital of Budapest — came in fourth and fifth.
The bad news for vacationers was that average booking prices per person per night reached 9,217 forints (€26.50), meaning an increase of 20 percent, while year-on year inflation in the country was just one quarter of that at 5.2 percent. Trepess said, however, that the higher prices were not just a result of price increases, but also slightly longer average bookings and a shift towards other, more expensive destinations.
In Hungary, where tourism and hospitality accounts for over 9 percent of GDP, the number of vaccinated people reached 5.023 million over the weekend, meaning that the inoculation rate now stands at 52 percent, the third highest in the world behind Israel (62.87 percent) and Mongolia (55.84 percent).
Title image: The most popular weekend destination was Eger with its medieval castle.
