Foreign tourism in Hungary may drop 5 percent in 2009, while domestic tourism is expected to stagnate due to the economic crisis, the local government minister in charge of tourism told reporters on Tuesday.
Budapest may be hit the most, where conference tourism has already declined, said Istvan Gyenesei.
Gyenesei noted that in 2008 the number of Polish and Romanian tourists went up significantly and the number of those from the Netherlands and Britain increased only slightly.
The number of German, Italian, Spanish and American tourists, however, dropped by 10 percent last year, compared to 2007, the minister said, adding that the trend may worsen because of the economic crisis.
On financing the sector, Gyenesei said that more than 100 billion forints (EUR 344m) are available for tourism in 2009-2010, up from 81.5 billion (EUR 275.5m) in 2006-2007.
The budget available for tourism after 2010 is 76 billion forints, he added.
A planned 3 percentage point VAT increase could generate 2-3 billion forints in extra expenses for hotels, the minister said. (EUR 1 = HUF 290.34)