The Hotel Gellert in Budapest – Photo: wikipedia

Tourism agency: Mandatory registration of hospitality venues to ‘enable data-based management’

Hungarian hospitality services and tourist attractions will have to register with the national tourism registry by the end of this year, Zoltan Guller, the head of the Hungarian Tourism Agency, told business daily Vilaggazdasag, explaining that the registry would enable data-based management of the sector.

Since 2019, data provided by Hungary’s 40,000 hotels and lodgings has been analysed systematically, including the number of guests, their age, city of residence, the time of reservation and time of payment, he said.

Big data analysis of those indicators allows the agency to assess the situation of the industry in real time and to forecast future trends, Guller said in an interview published on Wednesday.

“The data is handled with the strictest respect for personal rights,” he added.

Seeing the success of the programme, the agency has turned to parliament to have it expanded to restaurants, bars and all hospitality venues equipped with online cash machines, which will allow a detailed analysis of revenue and consumption, Guller said. “Since mobile cell data of foreigners’ phones, as well as their credit card data, are on hand from other sources, domestic and inbound tourism can be mapped almost in its entirety,” he said.

Meanwhile, Guller predicted a bumper year in 2022 for Hungary’s tourism sector.

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