Due to the rising prices in Europe, many people are being pushed out of their own markets, they should be reached.

A broad cooperation of professional organizations is necessary for the further development of tourism, for example, it would be good to compile an annual event calendar, said Ráhel Orbán, creative director of the BDPST Group, on Thursday at the MCC Fest round table discussion, which was organized on the prospects of domestic tourism.

He added that due to the rising prices affecting the whole of Europe, the guests living there in many countries were forced out of their own markets. It would be important to reach these guests, because we know their culture, we know what they are looking for, he said.

He pointed out that more and more emphasis is being placed on wellness and health tourism, and that their partners are requesting the creation of suites in which workshops and smaller events can be held in hotel conditions.

Ráhel Orbán said that Budapest can use the fact that it is less affected by climate change than southern countries, more and more guests come in the autumn period and there is peak activity on December weekends.

Balázs Kovács, CEO of Danubius Hotels, believed that overall, Hungarian tourism is not in a bad state, the number of guests has returned to the pre-epidemic level. He considered the sector's profitability to be more problematic, as it is greatly affected by rising energy prices, inflation, and wage costs due to the high demand for live labor.

He said that, as the head of the hotel association, he sees that the cooperation of the players in the sector has improved a lot in recent years.

In his opinion, the airport should have more long-distance connections, because well-paying tourists from America and the Far East could come.

Related to this idea, Zoltán Roy Zsiday, owner of the Zsidai Group and president of the Hungarian Restaurant Association, stated that it is necessary to expand shopping opportunities in order to attract more tourists who spend better, since

five "luxury tourists" equal to one hundred party tourists.

He believed that Budapest knows a lot from a tourism point of view and has everything, with the changing clientele, the country could get orders of magnitude more income from catering, and in the meantime we would not overburden the population with tourists.

MTI

Cover photo: Gergely Ditróy, Business Development Director of Portfolio Group (b1), Balázs Kovács, CEO of Danubius Hotels (b2), Ráhel Orbán, Creative Director of BDPST Group (b3) and Zoltán Roy Zsidai, owner of Zsidai Group, Hungarian Restaurant Association chairman (b4) of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium MCC Fest at the panel discussion entitled Show Hungary - the prospects of domestic tourism on the MOL main stage in Esztergom on August 1, 2024.
Source: MTI/Noémi Bruzák