Hungary as a tourist product: theoretical and promotional issues

Introduction 1 INTRODUCTION Hungary has become a Member State of the European Union on May 1 st 2004, taking to the end a process of economical and political changes begun 15 years before with the abandon of the former Socialist Block. During this period of transition, tourism has steady been one of the more dynamic sectors of the economy of the country, providing today a contribution of 10% to the domestic GDP and employing 390000 people (10% of the active labour force). However, significant changes in trends characterizing world tourism demand are taking place and an increasing competition among world tourist destinations forces professionals of the sector to make the finest efforts to continue attracting visitors from the traditional markets as well as to make Hungary attractive to the more dynamically growing source markets. Therefore, this work aims to focus on the role of Hungarian institutions in making the tourist destination competitive and in promoting it abroad, taking Italy as the main area of analysis. Personal interest for the tourism sector, the fall semester of 2002 spent at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences as exchange student and a three months internship in 2004 at the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Budapest has constituted the starting point of this work. In the first chapter the latest statistical figures concerning the role of Hungary in world tourism will be presented and commented. Despite the country figures in the ranking of the top fifteen visited destination it suffers from low earnings from tourism. Further breakdown of data aims at highlight the most significant changes occurred in the sector during the transition,