Commercial accommodations in Hungary draw more domestic visitors in July than in the same period a year ago, the Hungarian Tourism Agency said on August 17.

Some 1.2mn domestic travellers stayed at hotels with at least three stars last month, up from 1.1mn in the same month a year earlier.

The Central Statistics Office (KSH) will publish July tourism figures on September 8, but there is up-to-date data as commercial accommodations must submit data to the National Tourism Data Service Centre on a daily basis.

Preliminary data by state tourism agency MTU showed that the number of guest nights at hotels in July reached 3.8mn, down from 4.42mn year ago, when overnight stays by foreigners reached 1.88mn and 2.5mn by Hungarians.

This year however domestic travellers spent 3.6mn guest nights at commercial accommodations. The 200,000 foreign travellers stayed 700,000 nights. The region around Lake Balaton was the most popular destination drawing about 504,000 guests in July, who spent 1.7mn guest nights.

Bookings for August also look promising for domestic hotel operators. Data from the first two weeks of the month show that Hungarians have booked for 2.4mn guest nights during the period.

Campaigns to promote domestic tourism have yielded results, as more than 90% of Hungarians said they would plan to stay in Hungary for the holidays. The popular Szechenyi recreation card (SZEP) has also boosted spending.

Hungarians charged almost HUF8bn to their SZEP cards for commercial accommodation in July, about 17% of total turnover for the sector.

In the spring, the government expanded preferences for SZEP cards as part of measures to ease the impact of the coronavirus crisis.