The Hungarian government has approved the National Tourism Development Strategy 2030, a guideline to improve the sector right up until the year 2030.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán addressed the Tourism Summit 2017 conference in Budapest on Monday and said the strategy will “secure for Hungary a worthy place in world tourism”.
The prime minister added that the government had earmarked a total of 828 billion HUF (2.7bn EUR) to finance the scheme.
Tourism is not merely a source of revenue or a prosperous sector of Hungarian economy but a “form of patriotism, a mission,” he added.
According to MTI, PM Orbán praised the sector’s “unstoppable development”. He said “2016 was a record year, with the data available suggesting that this year will be even better.”
The prime minister also revealed that Hungary’s tourism sector will receive 21 billion HUF (68m EUR) from the central budget in 2017, while next year the sector will receive over 53 billion HUF and several more billion will be invested in the future.
PM Orbán revealed that guest nights were up by 50 percent last year compared with 2010, and revenues increased by over 115 percent. He also noted that the sector employs more than 360,000 people and accounts for 10 percent of the country’s GDP.
The new strategy will see tourism’s GDP share increase to 16 percent, while the number of people working in tourism could reach 450,000. PM Orbán said that focal areas of the new strategy are sports, culture and health tourism.
The prime minister said sports, culture and a healthy natural environment are factors that make Hungary an attractive destination. He said domestic tourism could see an uptick in future on the back of “growing wages, low inflation and Hungarians having more and more money.”