MTÜ: many more foreign tourists chose Balaton this year

By: Trademagazin Date: 2023. 08. 07. 11:27

Foreign guest traffic also performs well in the summer season at Lake Balaton, with most of the foreign guests choosing it for their vacation from German-speaking and Visegrád sending countries. Foreign guests spend slightly more than a quarter of the guest nights in the area, and they account for nearly a third of the income of lakeside accommodations, the Hungarian Tourism Agency (MTÜ) told MTI on Friday.

It was announced that between the beginning of summer and the middle of July, nearly 180,000 foreign guests spent nearly 650,000 nights on the shores of Lake Balaton. Foreign traffic thus exceeded the results of the same period last year by 14 percent.

According to the announcement, between June 1 and mid-July, the hotels on Lake Balaton registered 2.4 million nights, thus reaching 98.6 percent of the turnover of 2019. Hungarian guests accounted for the vast majority of traffic in the region, 73 percent, but the number of foreign guest nights also increased in line with national trends.

The MTÜ recalled that, according to the data of the European Travel Commission (ETC), the number of travelers expected to the Mediterranean region in the period between June and November has already decreased by 10 percent compared to last year due to problems related to climate change. At the same time, Lake Balaton increased the number of its foreign guests by 22 percent, who have already spent 14 percent more nights in the lake area compared to 2022.