An Examination of the Utilisation of Commercial Accommodation, with Special Regard to the Regions of Northern Hungary and the Southern Hungarian Plain

Abstract

One of the priorities of the development of tourism is to increase the supply of accommodations. From the early 1990s to the present day, tourism in Hungary has produced significant achievements. Following a decline of some years, the number of bed nights has increased with almost undiminished force; however, the increase in the number of accommodations broke in 2004 and the figures for the past years show a clear decrease. The appearance of the two phenomena different also in space raises the necessity for examining the utilisation of accommodations. The paper seeks to answer how the changes in the territorial distribution of tourist turnover and the extent of improvements in the composition of accommodations different from regions and counties to regions and counties affected the utilisation of accommodations and where the surpluses and deficiencies in terms of efficiency appeared. The issue was examined by using the shift-share analysis, which is relatively infrequently used in the professional literature on tourism, and the findings were formulated on the basis of the figures and data for the years 2000 and 2008.