Hospitality Sector Shrinking in Hungary

Labor shortage in the hospitality sector has eased, but it has not gone away, and the wage increase at the beginning of the year has already been eaten up by inflation. To solve the sector's labor shortages in the long term, even better wages are needed.

The President of the Hungarian Hotel & Restaurant Association, Csaba Baldauf estimated the number of people missing from the sector at 30-35,000 last year. When asked now, he said that this number could be around 20-25,000, which means a moderate easing of the shortage. Another factor contributing to the easing of the shortage is that the supply in the industry is also far below the level before the epidemic.

For example, according to data by the Central Statistical Office, in the summer of 2021, there were roughly 890 hotels in the country with nearly 53,000 rooms, 200 hotels or 9,000 rooms fewer than the peak capacity in 2017. But the drop in the category of collective accommodation, for example, was even greater.

Restaurants, by comparison, fared better, according to the statistics, with a drop of only 6% in this category compared to 2015, leaving almost 24,000 restaurants operating nationally last year.