Tourism patterns and travel habits are changing, and those changes could well be permanent. The reasons are terrible - climate change, extremist politics, war, genocide - but the changes themselves could well be beneficial for local economies, for the environment, and for the travel business.
Take Budapest, for instance. For North American tourists, the city has traditionally been a gateway city for cruising on the Danube. And like other gateway cities such as Kathmandu and Nairobi, people tend not to spend too much time in them, or pay much attention.
On a recent trip, courtesy of Visit Hungary, TravelPulse spoke with several travel advisers who had been to Budapest before, but hadn’t really seen it. They’d been chaperoning tours, or taking one of their own, but the city itself remained a cipher.
But as European droughts become more common and more extreme, river levels less reliable for the already shallow Danube, it’s time for Budapest to become a major destination of its own.
It’s certainly got the chops for it. And the climate.
Of all of the undertouristed European capitals, many of them from the former Soviet sphere of influence, Budapest is probably the most like candidate to emerge as a new major tourist destination as Paris and Barcelona and the other more Mediterranean hot spots get hotter, and hotter, and hotter.
Being inland, Budapest’s temperatures are more moderate, even though its farther south than, say, Paris. But it’s mostly thanks to all that tourism infrastructure put in place for all those river cruisers that put Budapest over the top, ahead of, say, Vilnius or Warsaw or Bucharest. All the hotel rooms are there, all the tour companies and restaurants, English multilingual menus and good signage.
The Four Seasons Gresham Palace is one of the most beautiful and well maintained examples of the Hungarian Secession movement (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
And it’s just Western enough, as the old co-capital with Vienna of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its gorgeous opera house and all of that Hungarian Secession architecture, to be familiar to people more accustomed to Spain and Italy, and just Eastern enough to be intriguing and worth a tour or two. (And I'd highly recommend our main guide for any client or group you might send: Réka Pátócs, [email protected], +36 30 701 0848.)
It's also got some of the finest cafes, with the finest cakes, anywhere outside of Austria.
Muvesz Kávéház, just down the street from the opera house; one of Budapest's oldest (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
Call it the next Prague. No cruising required.
The hotels
This was frankly the biggest surprise. There are some fantastic hotels here. And I’m not talking your usual run-of-the-mill five-star jobs (though the old Ritz-Carlton, rebranded as the Al Habtoor, with lots of service but little hospitality, qualifies as one of those). The good ones - and there are a lot of them - are distinct hotels, reflective of the city and its culture, with rooms you’ll remember.
The Parisi Udvar (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
Our host hotel was probably the most spectacular of the lot. The Parisi Udvar is centred on a grand arcade, rebuilt from one on the same site after decades of desuetude and ultimate destruction. The reception and dining area are in the middle of the several storey-high open space, which people regularly pop in to from the street to photograph. My room had excellent views of several other late 19th- or early 20th-century buildings, at least two of which were other hotels. The service was careful and friendly, the rooms spacious and appropriately designed. The breakfasts were mediocre, but so is almost every buffet breakfast in almost every four- and five-star hotel I’ve stayed at in the past five years. I’m guessing some folks at the respective chain HQs decided it was a good place to find efficiencies, and everyone else followed suit. Thankfully, Hungarian food is excellent, inexpensive, and plentiful just outside.
A langos with cubes of pork (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
The Dorotea was also impressive, laid out on a grand scale, modern, with work throughout commissioned from Hungarian photographer Zoltan Tombor, punctuating the dramatic but not overbearing architecture by Piero Lisoni. The rooms are gorgeous and once again designed in line with the overall aesthetic of the hotel in mind, and the presidential suite has a fantastic wraparound window that puts it in the running for the best we saw.
The signature suite at the Dorotea (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
But the food, well, the food is once again a disappointment, this time in the form of a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. It’s apparently better than the Jamie Oliver restaurant that opened a few years earlier, but why anyone would want to eat at either in Hungary is beyond. We all were hosted at the Gordon Ramsay, and while the wine was excellently chosen by the friendly sommelier, the food was, once again, mediocre.
The bar in one of the W's signature suites (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
W hotels are either fantastic (as in Mexico city or Taipei) or disappointments (Montreal, Toronto). As Toronto-based the.ryanexperience has pointed out, W as a whole lost its way a bit after Marriott acquired Starwood and W had to try to distinguish itself from Edition. Renovations are apparently going on now throughout the chain, and with any luck, they’ll find their mojo again. But whatever happens worldwide, the W Budapest is a winner. The location, overlooking the square where, among other things, the main Christmas market is held every year, is one strength. But the rooms, all large, and the signature suite - out of this world, even in the context of penthouses - with a fully stocked, life-sized vertical bar as the centrepiece of the entryway.
The mezzanine of the Continental (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
The mezzanine level of the Continental hotel, fashioned out of the barrel arches of an old bathhouse, are fabulous, but the biggest surprise was probably the independent Aria Hotel.
One of the regular rooms at the Aria (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
Music themed and mid-range, the building is divided into jazz, classical, opera and contemporary wings, with each room devoted to an individual musician and decorated accordingly, often in very bold, fun colours.
Just get a load of this piano in the Aria lobby (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
There’s a piano in the lobby, designed by Gergely Bogányi, that’s unlike any I’ve ever seen, black, high-gloss, with lines and curves that make you picture a Patrick Nagel model sitting at it playing The Chauffeur. Extremely, elegantly 80s, is what I’m saying.
The Aria's fantastic rooftop (Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
But the piece de resistance is the rooftop, with a Champagne bar and 360 views of all the most gorgeous buildings in Budapest. On a sunny day, I doubt there’s any place in town to beat it.
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