Few hotels in Hungary offer online booking, while websites on spare time activities belong to the most often visited pages.Only 52% of Hungary’s hotels and 25% of pension houses had an online booking system in Q1 2004. Of bookings to hotels, 7% were made through the internet last year, while the rate is only 6% among pension houses. Online payment was even more scarce; it accounted for less than 1% of all payments. According to a recent survey, about 80% of hotels and 75% of pension houses had internet access in Hungary in April 2004, while approximately 70% of hotels and 50% of pension houses set up their own websites.
Almost all four- and five-star hotels have internet access, while this rate falls to around 60% in the case of one- and two-star hotels and pensions. High-rated hotels pay more attention to be represented on foreign websites than on local ones, since the majority of their guests come from abroad. Lower-rated hotels prefer local tourism pages. About 75% of hotels with their own webpages offer online booking, but orders are mostly processed manually.
In order to process bookings automatically, hotels have to integrate their booking systems with the Internet, but this is not always the case even among five-star hotels. At hotels offering online booking, 12% of all reservations were made through the internet last year. At pension houses, the proportion of online booking was 19%. According to experts, in 2004 these figures can grow to 25% and 28%, respectively.
Source: HVG
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29.07.2004