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Both food tourism and literary tourism are increasingly popular products in the global market, but there is relatively limited collaboration between the two areas. In addition to providing an overview of the role of creativity and innovation in tourism development, with special emphasis on gastronomic tourism and literary tourism, the paper presents a unique hospitality concept that fuses gastronomy with literature, demonstrating the use of creativity in successful tourism product development. The research is based on qualitative methods: interviews with the business owners were used to explore the innovation process and the factors affecting the company's operations, and content analysis of customers' reviews on social media sites and the restaurant's media coverage were used to evaluate the role of creativity in the restaurant's success.

Based on qualitative research methods, the paper explores the emergence of creativity and innovation in the development of guiding services, and analyses the cultural and spatial characteristics of alternative guided tours developed for niche markets in Budapest, Hungary. The study is part of a 3-year (2011–2014) research programme entitled ‘Creativity and its contribution to niche tourism development – following and creating trends’ that aimed to investigate the potential of niche tourism products in the Hungarian market. In order to understand the development process, characteristics and significance of alternative guiding in the city, a complex methodology of interviews, participant observation and content analysis of service providers’ websites and customers’ feedback on social media sites was used. The analysis suggests that although the impact of these alternative guided tours on the city’s tourist image is currently limited, they contribute to the repositioning of the destination and enrich...

In this article, based on qualitative research in Hungary, we propose a new phrase for the field of tourist consumption. Our notion ‘anti-shopping tourism’ refers to the resistant attitude towards consumption and spending money during shopping-related tours. The research discussed in the paper analyses participants’ motivations, attitudes and behaviour on one-day coach trips that include various programmes, for example, sightseeing, lunch, spa visits and even a range of gifts, for a very low price, in exchange for participation in a professional sales show during the trip. Our main goal is to explain and, from an economic and anthropological point of view, conceptualise this form of tourist attitude, and to show how this unique way of travel may be situated in a certain historical setting in Hungary, more than two decades after the collapse of the socialist regime. In order to understand how the participating individuals negotiated this unique form of travel that exists in a grey zone of the institutional...

The Hungarian society is involved in shopping tourism both at international and national levels. For domestic and cross-border day trips, shopping has been a leading travel motivation for many years. In addition to the seductive shopping environments of discount stores, hypermarkets and shopping malls, the retail sector aims to stimulate and widen travelrelated demand by introducing alternative sales methods. One such method, outside the domain of retail outlets, is the TV-shop-style “sales show” or “product demonstration” that usually takes place in restaurants or in community spaces. In order to increase the number of participants, the companies organising product-demonstration shows usually combine these directly salesoriented events with domestic or cross-border day trips. Using the method of content analysis of promotional flyers distributed through letterboxes, this study explores the world of sales show trips. The analysis of 339 leaflets collected between 2006 and 2011 aims to demonstrate that these trips – presented as attractive travel opportunities and targeting mainly the senior-citizen segment – are, in fact, methods of sales promotion that are also included in the notion of “invisible tourism” in Hungary. Our research has proved the hypothesis that in these trips, the “travel function” is secondary, merely meant to create the illusion of escaping one’s mundane life and to move participants to an unfamiliar space where they are more likely to make hasty, less deliberated decisions, culminating, eventually, in purchasing the products on show. However, despite the fact that the visited destinations mainly act as stages for the process of product selling, and travel may be considered a “pseudo-tourist experience”, these trips do help participants learn more about the Carpathian basin, and increase the turnover of domestic tourist and leisure companies. It should also be noted that, in addition to their economic role, these trips fulfil a specific social tourism mission, too, providing some travel and community experience for their least wealthy, usually retired participants.

The paper delineates the connections between tourism and the local population’s quality of life in Harkány, a spa-town located in Southwest Hungary. During the spring of 2011, a questionnaire survey of 297 residents was undertaken in the town, in order to investigate their participation in tourism, and associated quality of life issues. In addition, residents’ attitudes related to thermal spa development in the town were analysed, together with the use of spa facilities by locals. The data analysis suggested that whilst the spa has a significant presence in the everyday life of the residents, the development of spa tourism has had very limited effects on their quality of life.

In the past two decades, community involvement in local policy-making has gained increasing attention as an alternative approach to rural development in the European Union (EU), particularly in the context of the complementary sectors of agriculture such as tourism. Although there is a wide range of integrated approaches to tourism development in rural areas identified in the literature, the event-based approach has not been at the centre of attention so far. This paper aims to fill this gap and reports on the collaborative capacity building of the LEADER 1 Local Action Groups (LAGs) for rural tourism promotion in the context of an innovative, national-level event, the ‘Hungarian Rural Tourism Days’. A mixed-method approach was applied to explore and compare the supply-side views on the successes and failures of the event planning and organisation process and to derive key success factors of the event-based approach to Integrated Rural Tourism (IRT). The results provided evidence on the consequences of the failure to integrate local concerns into the event organisation process and highlighted the critical role of the intermediary management in establishing trust relationships with the rural service providers. Furthermore, it is argued that the major challenge of the event-based approach to IRT rests in the capacity of the stakeholders to collectively plan and implement a marketing strategy at the local level.

The concept of social tourism is not new for Hungary. In the socialist era, social tourism took place mostly in mountain, lake-side or spa destinations, as a part of the social services supported by (state owned) companies and trade unions. The facilities, i.e. accommodation establishments of often low quality, were run by companies or trade unions. Employees, union members and their families were eligible to visit these premises. These trips were either free or heavily subsidised. Following the changes around 1990, the old support system collapsed. This system was replaced by the so-called supported holiday system. Social tourism establishments were either privatised or closed down. The role and power of trade unions diminished, the ministry's budget was cut and reorganised significantly. Organisations and companies allocated lower amounts for social benefits and gradually removed inherited obligations, i.e. social tourism. The paper discusses the development and transformation of social tourism in Hunga...

Hungary is ranked among the most important spa and health tourism destinations in the world. The number and variety of mineral and medicinal waters result in a unique supply in Eastern Central Europe. In Hungary, 51 settlements have certified medical spas, with Budapest, the capital city offering 7 medical spas alone. In addition to their favourable impact on tourism development, the wide range of baths and spa hotels of international standards also affect the real estate market in a positive way. Tourists, who wish to regularly benefit from the medicinal qualities of the waters and the associated medical treatments, may decrease their costs of stay either by buying their own property or by investing in a time-share accommodation facility. Of course, real estate transactions in spa destinations are not always explained by health tourism related motivations; buyers may plan to rent out their property and may be attracted by the expected return on their investment, or may simply wish to repeatedly enjoy the tourist milieu of a given destination. In this article, the spatial characteristics of Hungarian spa destinations’ domestic and international tourism demand will be analysed. In addition, the tourism-oriented characteristics of the spa towns’ housing markets (with special emphasis on second homes and other properties with leisure-related functions) are to be assessed and foreign citizens’ activities on the property market of these settlements evaluated. The research is based on the census and the tourism statistics of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office as well as the registry of foreigners’ real estate transactions drawn up by the Ministry of Local Government.

Mountain and hill sites have played a key role as pilgrimage and religious tourism destinations for thousands of years. Mountain areas with traditional sacred cultural and natural values can particularly benefit from the stimulation of religious tourism, in the forms of improved service supply, employment creation and revenue generation. First, the paper provides an overview of the relationship between religion and tourism, and the role of religious tourism and pilgrimages in the great world religions. In the second part, the authors assess the environmental factors as well as the various scenes and places of religious tourism developed in mountain areas, with special emphasis on meta-spaces and spatial metaphors.

The aim of this paper is to map some of the new developments that have been taking place in Budapest since 1989, in particular focusing on the role that tourism and cultural regeneration have played in transforming old spaces into new places. The redevelopment of former socialist cities is politically complex, as new power relationships need to be negotiated, heritage values must be reassessed, and widening economic and social disparities should be addressed. Tourism needs to be managed carefully if it is to contribute in a positive way to economic development, heritage conservation and promotion, and enhancement of the local quality of life. A number of examples are used to demonstrate the spatial transformations that are taking place in Budapest. In some cases, historic spaces have been accorded new and symbolic status (e.g. as World Heritage Sites); some attractions have been re-packaged as itineraries or trails (e.g. the Cultural Avenue project). Some socialist heritage has been removed to th...

This paper takes a multi-level approach to the analysis of Budapest as a capital city and tourism destination, focusing on the international, European, regional and national elements used in image ...

Bu çalışma turistik çekim merkezlerinde çevre algılarının gelişimine katkıda bulunan anahtar faktörleri özetlemektedir. Turistin algıladığı çevre onun nesnel olarak tecrübe ettiği ortamın öznel bir göstergesidir ve bu çevre, daha yüksek düzeylerde sosyal bilinçle bütünleşmiş bireysel ziyaretçi algılamaları olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bir turistik çekim merkezinin ortamı ziyaretçi duygu ve algılarını yansıtan ortak bilgiye dayalı olmaktadır. Bu araştırma, algılanan imajın sosyal bilincin bir parçası olarak ortaya çıkmasında nesnel ziyaretçi algılarının öznelleşmesi sürecini incelemeyi hedeflemektedir. Aynı zamanda araştırmada ziyaretçi katılım ve tecrübesinin teori oluşumundaki rolüne vurgu yapılarak çevre ve imajın hiyerarşik ilişkisi de değerlendirilmektedir. Çalışma, Akdeniz'de turistik çevre olgusunu ve algılanan bileşen­lerini araştırmak için Macaristan'da yürütülen nitel bir araştırmanın sonuçlarını sunmaktadır. Yaşanılan coğrafyanın davranış üzerindeki etkisini konu alan davranışçı yaklaşıma dayanarak, üç güney Avrupa ülkesi; İspanya, İtalya ve Yunanistan'ın ortak davranış göstergeleri, Akdeniz'de turistik çevrenin belirgin bileşenlerini ortaya çıkarmak ve bu bileşenleri disiplinler arası bir turistik çekim yeri - turistik tüketim çatısı altında bütünleştirmek amacıyla eleştirel olarak değerlendirilmektedir.

The paper aims to explore the consumption of cultural events realised within the framework of invisible tourism mobility in Hungary, based on the assumption that a significant proportion of the Hungarian population’s tourism-related cultural event consumption remains hidden as a consequence of inadequate data collection, despite the economic and social contribution of culturally motivated trips to the individuals’ quality of life and the destinations’ and attractions’ demand and revenue characteristics.

What makes life worth living? Many people would argue that it is fulfilling experiences. These experiences are characterised by feelings of joy and pleasure, positive relationships and a sense of engagement, meaning and achievement. Tourism is arguably one of the largest self-initiated commercial interventions to promote well being and happiness on the global scale but yet there is absence in the literature on the topic of fulfilling tourist experiences from psychological perspectives. Drawing on insights and theories from the research field of positive psychology (the study of well being), this is the first edited book to evaluate tourist experiences from positive psychology perspectives. The volume addresses the important topic of fulfilment through the lens of the world's largest social global phenomenon tourism. In doing so, the book refreshes and challenges some aspects of tourist behaviour research. The chapters are grouped under three broad sections which reflect a range of positive psychological outcomes that personal holiday experiences can produce, namely; happiness and humour; meaning and self-actualisation and health and restoration. The book critically explores these fulfilling experiences from interdisciplinary perspectives and includes research studies from wide range of geographical regions. By analysing the contemporary fulfilling tourist experiences the book will provide further understanding of tourist behaviour and experience. Written by leading academics this significant volume will appeal to those interested in Tourism and Positive Psychology.

The paper summarises Hungarian visitors' perceptions of the key components of Lake Balaton's tourist milieu and seeks to identify those components that influence the guests' quality of life. The study aims to analyse the relationship between the cultural landscape and the happiness of tourists, by investigating the contribution of the tourist milieu's various components to the development of tourists' positive attitudes and perceptions concerning their quality of life. In order to assess the notion and the perceived components of the tourist milieu of Lake Balaton, a survey was carried out with 800 respondents in Hungary in 2007. Based on the behaviourist approach of geography, respondents' perceptions are critically analysed in order to identify the specific components of the Lake's milieu, especially those connected with the quality of life. Although tourism started to develop in the region already in the 19th century, and the cultural landscape around the lake has been shaped by natural as well as social forces, the study findings indicate that the perceived destination milieu of Lake Balaton is determined by attributes related to summer and hedonistic consumption reinforcing the stereotypical position of the region as a short-season summer holiday destination. Those components of the perceived tourist that substantially contribute to visitors' overall sense of happiness are also seen as influential and memorable factors in the holiday experience. Consequently, the research results suggest that the creation of idyllic surroundings by conscious development measures may significantly contribute to an overall positive perception of the destination's milieu and may also have a major impact on visitors' experience and their willingness-to-return.

The banks of the Danube and the Buda Castle Quarter in Budapest were inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1987 under criteria C (ii) (iv). According to UNESCO’s verdict, the area is one of the world’s outstanding urban landscapes and illustrates the great periods in the history of the Hungarian capital. The World Heritage Site (WHS), which displays the continuity of history as an urban panorama, includes the House of Parliament, the bridges spanning the Danube, the Gellert Hill and the Buda Castle.

Although shopping has been long acknowledged as a major tourist activity, the extent and characteristics of shopping tourism have only recently become the subject of academic research and discussion. As a contribution to this field of knowledge, the paper presents the characteristics of shopping tourism in Hungary, and discusses the typically female features of outbound Hungarian shopping tourism. The research is based on a survey of 2473 Hungarian tourists carried out in 2005. As the findings of the study indicate, while female respondents were altogether more likely to be involved in tourist shopping than male travellers, no significant difference was experienced between the genders concerning the share of shopping expenses compared to their total travel budget. In their shopping behaviour, women were typically affected by price levels, and they proved to be both more selfish and more altruistic than men by purchasing more products for themselves and for their family members. The most significant differences between men and women were found in their product preferences as female tourists were more likely to purchase typically feminine goods such as clothes, shoes, bags and accessories, in the timing of shopping activities while abroad, and in the information sources used by tourists, since interpersonal influences such as friends’, guides’ and fellow travellers’ recommendations played a higher role in female travellers’ decisions., Premda se kupovanje (shopping) već odavno smatra glavnom turističkom aktivnošću, opseg i karakteristike shopping-turizma tek su nedavno postali predmetom akademskog istraživanja i rasprava. Kao prinos tom znanstvenom području, ovaj rad donosi obilježja shopping-turizma u Mađarskoj i raspravlja o tipično ženskim obilježjima mađarskoga shopping-turizma u inozemstvu. Istraživanje se temelji na ispitivanju 2473 mađarska turista provedenom 2005. godine. Kao što pokazuju rezultati ispitivanja, dok su ispitanice više uključene u shopping-turizam, s obzirom na udio troškova kupnje u odnosu na ukupni putni proračun nije pronađena značajna rodna razlika. Što se tiče ponašanja prilikom kupnje, na žene su tipično utjecale razine cijena te su se one istodobno pokazale i sebičnijima i nesebičnijima od muškaraca, kupujući više proizvoda za sebe i članove svojih obitelji. Najznačajnije razlike između muškaraca i žena odnose se na stvari koje najviše vole kupovati, jer turistkinje radije kupuju tipično ženske proizvode kao što su odjeća, cipele, torbe i modni dodaci, zatim na dobar odabir vremena za kupnju dok su u inozemstvu i na korištenje izvorima informacija kojima se obično služe turisti, budući da međuljudski utjecaji kao što su preporuke prijatelja, vodiča i suputnika imaju veću važnost u odlukama ženskih putnika.

Apart from obvious and visible effects on the economy and the physical environment, tourism can contribute to social and cultural changes in host societies, including changes in value systems, traditional lifestyles, family relationships, individual behaviour or community structure. In Hungary, most studies on the impacts of tourism have so far been restricted to economic analysis, and the subject of socio-cultural impacts of tourism has been underresearched.

In the process of achieving well-being and welfare, tourism may act as a stimulus on many levels. Based on two national surveys conducted by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in 2007, and by the Geographical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Kodolanyi Janos University of Applied Sciences, the paper explores the influence of tourism on the Hungarian society’s perception of well-being and welfare. The research findings indicate that although various benefits of tourism are acknowledged, it is not considered a crucial component of one’s quality of life. The analysis of socio-cultural factors indicates that age and financial circumstances affect the contribution of tourism to well-being: a person’s financial situation and age determine, to a great extent, the role of travel in their life, and consequently also influences the function of travel as a happiness-inducing factor.

This paper presents the characteristics of tourism development at Lake Balaton, Hungary, with special emphasis on the physical environment, and discusses how the residents' and the tourists' perceptions of the physical impacts of tourism development affect the sustainability of tourism in the region. The methodology used to gather information on tourism's physical impacts included structured interviews with residents and tourists, unstructured interviews with the representatives of the tourist industry, a Delphi survey and a Tourism Impact Matrix. The research shows that due to the characteristics of tourism development in the region, only a certain form of mass tourism can be sustained, though in a better managed way. Both residents and tourists perceived both positive and negative impacts of tourism development – economic benefits being considered as the most significant impacts of tourism by residents. Even though local people could also identify unfavourable impacts of tourism, the support for the exp...

Tourism in Hungary is a key economic activity, as the travel and tourism industry is a net contributor to the growth of the Hungarian economy. However, the inflow of foreign capital has significantly contributed to the development of Hungarian tourism over the past decade, and the country's tourism industry continues to depend on external economic factors. This paper presents the findings of a survey carried out in 2004 to supplement industry data with an assessment of travel behaviour and to develop a comparison between the theoretical assumptions of the existing literature and the empirical results in the study area (Hungary).

Medical tourism is a relatively new fi eld in Hungarian health tourism development, with significant growth potential. The paper presents the findings of an Internet-based research project that aims to explore the fundamental characteristics of medical tourism in Hungary. The key issues discussed in the framework of the analysis are the interrelationship of healthcare and tourism on the one hand, and the spatial distribution of medical services and treatments on the other hand. The research identified four main segments of the Hungarian medical tourism product: (1) the international tourism- and expatriate-oriented healthcare of Budapest, (2) the socio-geographically determined medical practices located near the Austrian border, (3) the combination of traditional spa culture and latest medical technology in the classical spa towns, and (4) the fast developing regional centres of the periphery