Joint International Conference on Long-term Experiments ...

assessed the different conditions of the Great Plain region inserted into a Hungarian
regional comparison system.
Nowadays, tourism is one of the most developing industrial branches; additionally, it
results the highest incomes from export in the world (UNO, 2002). Tourism offers for
127 million people possibility of work, with its share of 6 % of the world’s GDP, i.e.
each fifteenth person works in the field of tourism. If we include also workplaces
connected indirectly to tourism, then we get 260 million workplaces, i.e. approx. 10 %
of GDP (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2004). Incomes originated from tourism
achieved the value of 622 million USD in 2004 exceeding by 18.7 % the incomes of
2003. The above mentioned data do not contain inland travels, the number of which
may be the sextuple of international travels.
Tourism also plays an important role in the economy of Hungary. The value of the
foreigners’ consumption visiting Hungary was 822 billion HUF in 2004, within which
the value of tourist consumption was 596 billion HUF. Moreover, the Hungarian
population spent 385 billion HUF on tourist services. Summing these, the value of
touristical incomes achieved 981 billion HUF. The total GDP of touristical branches is 5
% of the whole Hungarian GDP. Taking into account also multiplier impacts 8.5 % of
the Hungarian GDP originates from tourism. The number of employees employed
directly in the field of tourism was 398,000 persons in 2004, which is 8.9% of the total
employment. Taking into account multiplier impacts the mentioned proportion increases
to 12.5 %, which means that each 8 th workplace has been produced by tourism.
Table 1.: touristically qualified riding establishments and services in Hungary
Number of horseshoes
5 4 3 2 1 Other* Total
Qualified establishments (pcs) 15 29 32 29 27 26 158
Accommodation (pcs) 831 702 572 445 880 1022 4452
Roofed riding ground (pcs) 9 13 8 1 2 7 40
Own horse number (pcs) 1635 778 757 574 471 1997 6212
Accommodation for foreign horses
(pcs) 232 359 377 166 221 649 2004
* E.g. presentation sites, horse-breeding, riding education establishments and
establishments rendering services of nomadic character.
The most popular destinations are Budapest, lake Balaton and spa resorts. The average
capacity utilisation of commercial accommodations was 39.5% in 2005. The best
utilisation, i.e. 48.2 % average utilisation was achieved by hotels. The average
utilisation of guest-houses was 22.7 %. The demand for higher quality accommodations
has increased, while the demand has decreased for lower quality services. The income
of commercial accommodation was 112.3 billion HUF and the income of hospitality
was 53.6 billion HUF and the income originated from other sources was 48.5 billion
HUF in 2005. The total income was 214.4 billion HUF, from which the share of hotels
was the highest (187.1 billion HUF). Anyway, the share of other commercial
accommodations was only 27.3 billion HUF. Accommodations are used almost by
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