De-marketing or Re-marketing? Managing ’Overtourism’ in Budapest
(A2020-64019)

AUTHORS

Zombor Berezvai, Corvinus University of Budapest; Ivett Pinke-Sziva, Corvinus University of Budapest; Melanie Kay Smith, Budapest Metropolitan University

KEYWORDS

Overtourism; De-marketing; Cultural tourism

ABSTRACT

Numerous cities are currently addressing the challenges of so-called ’overtourism’ using various approaches, such as restricting tourist numbers, regulating tourist behaviour, managing tourist flows or re-directing tourists to alternative destinations. The concept of de-marketing and especially selective de-marketing is also considered to be a possible tool. This paper focuses on Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, which has been suffering from a form of overtourism which is mainly concentrated in two districts of the city in the ’party quarter’. However, until a few years ago, Budapest was mainly perceived by visitors to be a cultural and heritage destination and was marketed as such. This paper uses questionnaire data to examine the extent to which visitors to Budapest still undertake cultural activities and the data is used to gauge whether there is a realistic chance of de-marketing the city as a party destination and re-marketing it as a cultural tourism destination.