Zakynthos or Lake Balaton? A one week holiday: cheaper at home or abroad?
- Pakuts Tamás
- 2021. júl. 17.
- 5 perc olvasás
Our last minute decision (namely to fly to Zakynthos) was based on our dismay at the hotel prices in Hungary, but especially in Balaton, which were not only above Austrian or German level, but also inferior in quality and environment, reminiscent of St.Tropez, at least in terms of pricing.
So we decided to travel in parallel, and experience a virtual tour of Lake Balaton that is roughly identical to our Zakynthos itinerary.
Our methodology was as follows: 2 adult travellers travelling together on the same flight and sharing the same room.
We searched for accommodation of the same type, size and quality, and as with restaurant services, we selected similar food and drink from menus in the same quantity and quality. The euro exchange rate before our trip was 350 HUF, which we used to convert all expenses from euro to forint or from forint to euro. Comparisons in our foreign language blog posts are based on euros.
However, at Lake Balaton we have already encountered several obstacles when renting a car: we found offers from smaller companies only with cash deposit payments and from Avis, but we will never contact Avis/Budget car rental again because of our experience in Palermo last year. Therefore, Balaton Duo 72 replaced the transport for us at Lake Balaton, which is a joint product of MÁV and Volán and is unfortunately not getting enough promotion. So Balaton has gained a significant advantage in the transport segment, because MÁV offers domestic train transport at a very affordable price, so we can get to the Hungarian sea cheaper compared to low-cost airlines.
All costs and expenses were taken into account at the same time, on the same day, in the same quantity and number of people, and were recorded in an excel sheet:
We have also doubled the scenario in Zakynthos. Although we organised the trip entirely online, we also made a few phone calls to see how much more or less it would have cost if we had organised it ourselves with a travel agency, and how the travel agency package would be compared to the prices at Lake Balaton. Four Hungarian travel agencies have travel packages to the island and operate charters from Budapest with Travel Service, so we took the figures from their offers for comparison.
The figures speak for themselves and do not require much explanation.
If you only consider getting there (transportation), then Lake Balaton is a sure winner (train from Budapest, ferry between the two banks), a few short taxi rides to the accommodation from the train stations, and bus and train between the accommodation using the Balaton Duo. With own arrangements, a last minute purchase, so not the cheapest flights (low cost, Wizzair), a small backpack and a carry-on, this would have been 199% more expensive than to reach Lake Balaton, whereas if we had chosen a travel agency and chartered a plane with their services, it would have been 388% more expensive.
In the case of accommodation, we made two direct bookings in Zakynthos with the accommodation providers and got a better offer than on the online portals. In one case, we paid the same price as on booking.com, but we got all the extras for free - so everyone got a benefit, and in the second case we saved almost 40%. We booked the third accommodation on booking.com because we were getting so many discounts that even the landlord couldn't compete: Genius level 2, exclusive offer and booking via mobile - with a discount of almost 35% and as it was a love at first sight apartment (penthouse with terrace), we would have been happy with less.
We were only cheating on the Zakynthos travel agency offers because the charters were not yet available at the time of our departure, so we waited for the current last minute prices, which are significantly cheaper (25-55%) than the catalogue prices, and we calculated with them. We have taken the last minute "flight only" price and deducted it from the total package price to get the cost of accommodation.
When choosing accommodation at Lake Balaton, we used the most cost-effective online portals.
The maths: obviously self-catered accommodations in Zakynthos were the cheapest, with a travel agency paying only 34% more, compared to 142% more for accommodation at Lake Balaton.
Meals, beaches and snacks are of course included in the same amount in both the self-organised and travel agency versions of the Zakynthos, but the surprise is that, expensive euro here or expensive euro there, it is 25% cheaper to eat out in Greece than in Hungary.
If you count all the expenses and overheads, it's still significantly cheaper to spend a week in Greece on your own, but basically a holiday at Lake Balaton and a holiday in Greece with a travel agency are at the same price, costing 28-30% more than a carefully planned trip to Zakynthos on your own. And the experience, the sea, the atmosphere are all significantly different. And all these are comparibly better and priceless.
I used to manage a travel agency myself, but that was back at the time of the millennium. But already back then, I felt that travellers were taking control and organisation into their own hands, which has now become a reality.
The fact that it has become a luxury to take a holiday in Hungary as a Hungarian is a response to the pandemic, and also a consequence of the fact that not all hotels have been reopened. This phenomenon has been going on not only during and after the pandemic, but goes back to a longer period in neighbouring Austria or Germany, where we can pay more for a half-board night in the mountains than for a week's holiday abroad by plane, but not everywhere. Of course, there is an ethical aspect to all of this, namely whether we should charge more than is fair for an accommodation or service. Another question is whether guests who have been quickly fleeced by the current situation will return to these hotels or restaurants after the pandemic.
We need to keep a track of how the travel market, the hotel industry, the aviation industry is changing. We could expect many surprises, both positive and negative.
But one thing is for sure: the effort it took us to book and organise the accommodation was worth it. For those who have less time or don't speak a foreign language, there are some travel agencies, although the number of them, especially the good ones, is constantly decreasing.
About the author:
Tamás Pakuts has been actively involved in aviation and tourism for almost 35 years, and in the hotel and catering industry for nearly 20 years.
As a manager and consultant, he has had an insight into the operations of several airlines, as well as hotels, hotel chains and cruise lines, successfully taking part in their operational management, crisis management and development.
He and his colleagues are now present in many countries around the world as experts, consultants and trainers in the hotel and air transport industries, and are working with colleagues to develop a number of new projects of international recognition.