Not more tourists, but more value

What should Hungary adopt from the Slovenian tourism strategy?

A national tourism strategy is never just about how many guests a country wants to welcome, what markets it wants to advertise in, or how many new hotel rooms it wants to create.

The national tourism strategy is actually a political and economic value choice: it shows in whose interest tourism is being developed, who benefits from its revenues, and what kind of country they want to create through it.

Hungary and Slovenia are geographical neighbors. Both have significant natural, cultural, medical and gastronomic values, neither is a classic mass seaside destination, and both have to position themselves in strong regional competition.

Yet the tourism strategies of the two countries reflect fundamentally different thinking.

Slovenia talks about how tourism can create greater value for guests, businesses, workers, local communities and the environment .

Hungary's official documents are also full of terms related to sustainability, cooperation and locality, but behind the implementation, a much more traditional, centralized and politically highly selective system emerges.

The difference is therefore not primarily in the wording, but in the priorities, metrics and allocation of resources .

A little more – but a lot better

The motto of the Slovenian Tourism Strategy 2022–2028 is simple: A little bit more and a lot better.

The Slovenian strategy does not give up on growth, but it does not consider the continuous increase in guest numbers or capacities as an achievement in itself. The chosen development model envisages moderate and selective capacity expansion, while emphasizing higher quality, better price position, greater added value and reduced environmental impact.

He summarizes his vision in three short terms:

Green boutique style. Smaller footprint. Greater value for everyone.

The document does not stop at the slogan. It assigns five strategic and twenty development goals, seven defining policies, three horizontal policies and a total of 94 measures for implementation. The main areas include human resources, sustainability, accessibility and sustainable mobility, as well as the integration of destination management and tourism service providers.

The success of Slovenian tourism is not only measured in guest nights. The goals include:

• guest satisfaction;

• local population's satisfaction with tourism;

• satisfaction of people working in tourism;

• a 35 percent increase in average sector wages;

• increasing the residence time;

• improving the added value of tourism;

• reducing the carbon footprint per guest night;

• improving public services and operational quality of destinations.

This in itself clearly shows the essence of strategic thinking. In Slovenia, they not only ask how many tourists have arrived, but also how the locals live next to them, how much the workers in the sector earn, in what condition the environment remains, and how much real value is created in the local economy .

In Hungary, quantity remains the number one

The current direction of the Hungarian National Tourism Development Strategy 2030 is determined by Tourism 2.0 and its supplement. The long-term goals of the documents continue to emphasize reaching 20 million guests and the 50 million guest nights they generate per year, as well as further increasing the economic weight of tourism.

These are not flawed goals in themselves. A tourism strategy naturally deals with demand, traffic, revenues and contribution to GDP.

The problem is that the evaluation of tourism policy in Hungary is based almost exclusively on these visually communicateable volume indicators. We regularly hear about guest records, guest night records, airport traffic and accommodation revenues. Much less about:

• how much revenue remains locally;

• how the profitability of tourism SMEs is changing;

• how much the sectoral real wage will increase;

• what is the employee satisfaction level;

• what do the residents of the affected settlements think about tourism;

• Will the environmental impact per guest night be reduced?

• Will the transport accessibility of smaller areas improve?

• Will the predominance of Budapest, Lake Balaton and some well-known spa towns diminish?

The Hungarian strategy uses the concepts of sustainability, local economy, environmentally friendly transport and quality of life of communities. The supplement also states that the impact of developments and increasing traffic on the lives of local people should be examined, walking, cycling and public transport should be prioritized, and local products and services should be more intensively involved.

So the question is not whether the right words are in the document. They are. The question is what has become of them into a mandatory, accountable, and measurable practice .

The official strategy and the real beneficiaries

One of the most serious problems of Hungarian tourism development is that, in addition to strategic goals referring to the public interest, implementation has resulted in a significant concentration of tourism assets and state subsidies.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to claim that Hungarian tourism policy in recent years has primarily served the interests of a narrow, politically well-connected economic circle.

According to an analysis published by Transparency International Hungary in 2021, almost 219 billion forints of direct support were awarded under the Kisfaludy program in 2020. Although nearly 16,000 support decisions were made, the top 100 recipients received more than 70 percent of the total, or about 158 billion forints. According to the report, businesses and municipalities close to the government were overrepresented among the largest beneficiaries.

Hunguest Hotels' subsidiaries received more than 18 billion forints in support, of which 17.7 billion were awarded for the development of fourteen hotels.

Of course, no study proves that the sole purpose of creating the strategy was to enrich a certain political elite.

However, the result of the implementation is difficult to dispute:

A significant portion of publicly funded developments have strengthened the wealth and market position of actors who already had significant economic power and political connections. This is not simply a moral or corruption issue. It also distorts the structure of tourism.

State aid not only renovates a building, but also creates a competitive advantage, property value, sales capacity, and long-term market position.

If these benefits are permanently concentrated in the same narrow circle, tourism development will not reduce, but rather increase, the difference between large companies and smaller service providers.

The countryside as a communication setting

Hungarian documents speak of “the promise of rural Hungary’s experiences”, of tranquility, nature and “hidden treasures”. - However, this is not a rural development strategy in itself.

The countryside does not become a tourist destination just because a campaign film is made about it, a few accommodations are renovated, a visitor center is set up, or a new tourist area is created that barely functions in practice.

A true destination requires a cooperative service provider network, transportation, unified information, bookable programs, local products, hospitality, maintained public spaces, event strategy, and professional management.

It is true that small accommodation facilities also received support under the Kisfaludy program: according to an analysis by Transparency International, around 14,000 private and other accommodation facilities with up to eight rooms received a total of 41.5 billion forints, but the individual renovation of many thousands of rooms does not yet build a functioning rural tourism ecosystem.

Supporting small service providers should not end with a new bathroom or window replacement; they should also be helped to become part of the destination's joint sales system, reach guests, and cooperate with local restaurants, producers, tour guides, museums, and transportation providers.

In Hungary, this networking has largely been lacking. In many cases, the countryside remains a collection of fragmented service providers, weak local organizations, and barely interconnected attractions.

The same product shelf for decades

Hungarian tourism has largely been built on the same elements for decades: Budapest, Lake Balaton, health and spa tourism, wine and gastronomy, conferences, castles, religious sites, active tourism, festivals and major sporting events.

These are all important and developable products. The problem is not that Hungary uses them, but that it is barely able to create new, internationally or even domestically understandable rural destinations alongside them .

Where are the consistently built small-town cultural networks? The routes of transport and industrial heritage? The cross-border common spaces? The regional gastronomic routes? The tourist packages that can be visited by rail, bus and boat? The multi-day, bookable offers connecting villages, small towns and landscape values?

From a communication perspective, the tourist map of Hungary is still much smaller than the actual geographical and cultural map of the country.

Sustainability without metrics: greenwashing

Sustainability is present almost everywhere in the Hungarian strategy. Renewable energy, green tourism, local products, environmentally friendly transport, load capacity, social sustainability and a green tourism trademark to be introduced later are also among the goals.

However, the document often uses terms such as “should be encouraged”, “necessary”, “recommended”, “should receive special attention”.

Slovenia, on the other hand, assigns baselines, targets, data sources, measures and a monitoring system to sustainability. The implementation of the strategy is to be monitored on a quarterly, semi-annual and annual basis, with an annual public report, a digital scoreboard, an interim evaluation and an external expert evaluation at the end of the strategy cycle.

This is the difference between sustainability policy and greenwashing:

As long as there is no baseline data, target value, person responsible, deadline, and public accountability, sustainability is not a strategic obligation, but a communication decoration.

In Hungarian tourism, the green flag has often been placed on a traditional growth model based on capacity and real estate development. This has not made the model itself more sustainable.

Lots of data without real guest management

One of Hungary's real tourism strengths is the NTAK. The system provides up-to-date data on accommodation, hospitality and attraction traffic and can be suitable for supporting business planning, marketing and sector management. The strategic supplement also talks about regionally differentiated campaigns and data-driven marketing.

However, data collection is not the same as destination management.

There is no clear, national system in place to ensure that, based on the data:

• distribute guest traffic in time and space;

• direct demand towards lesser-known settlements;

• they connect popular cities with the surrounding countryside;

• relieve overloaded locations;

• coordinate transport and tourism offers;

• measure the real carrying capacity of destinations;

• help smaller providers capture demand.

Hungary has a significant amount of data needed to understand visitor flows. What is missing is the conscious management of visitor flows based on social, territorial and environmental considerations.

What should we take from Slovenia?

It's not the Slovenian slogan that should be copied. The operating model behind it should be adopted.

In addition to guest numbers, Hungary should measure the added value per guest night, the revenue that remains locally, employee and population satisfaction, sectoral wage convergence, and environmental impact.

The support system should be redirected from individual real estate developments towards local service networks, transport connections, bookable products and professional destination management.

A public tourism strategy dashboard would be needed, showing not only the results but also the gaps. Each measure should be assigned a responsible person, deadline, budget, baseline data and measurable target value.

And the countryside should not be identified with a few prominent lakes, spa towns and subsidized hotels. The whole of Hungary should be organized into a living, interconnected tourist space.

The true test of strategy

The Slovenian system is not flawless, and a strategic document there does not automatically guarantee successful implementation. The point is, however, that Slovenia at least clearly articulates the kind of tourism it wants: better quality, higher added value, a smaller environmental footprint, and one that benefits more stakeholders.

The Hungarian system, on the other hand, uses modern terms to describe the same centralized, volume- and investment-driven model that has been based on the same products, the same destinations, and increasingly the same narrow economic circle for decades.

Tourism is not national just because a subsidized hotel is built or renovated in every region.

It becomes national because the small town guesthouse, the village innkeeper, the local producer, the tour guide, the museum, the train station, the restaurant and the settlement community can all become part of a functioning tourism system.

Hungary doesn't necessarily need more tourists. What it needs is for the value created by tourism to finally go to more than just a few.