Author: Levente, Horváth (2020). Hungarian-Chinese Tourism Diplomacy from the Perspective of Chinese Outbound Tourism. In: A Geopolitical Assessment of the Belt and Road Initiative (edit. Csaba, Dr. Moldicz). Budapest, BBS, 2020. 79-104. pp. – https://obic-bbs.hu/_files/200001559-eee26eee2a/OBIC%20BRI.pdf
Tourism and travel are the most important cultural and economic exchange between countries, and they have also become one of the largest industries around the world today. International tourism is a multimillion-dollar industry that involves billions of people moving around the globe, therefore more and more countries are interested to develop their tourism diplomacy to show the most appealing side of their countries and to get a bigger share of this huge industry and, in addition, to utilize the positive side effects of tourism in other fields of their economy.
Hungary also has to be ready for this new kind of diplomacy and should put efforts into building good diplomatic relations in tourism with leading countries in this field, such as China. China has now become the largest outbound tourism market and the biggest spender on travel abroad, which made a lot of countries compete in attracting more Chinese tourists.
The study briefly introduces the past and current characteristics of the Hungarian– Chinese tourism relationship, then presents the result of the research on the Hungarian–Chinese tourism diplomacy in the perspective of the rapidly increasing Chinese outbound tourism. Finally, it makes suggestions how to improve tourism diplomacy strategy in the context of Hungary’s relations to China in order to enhance competitiveness and make the Hungarian–Chinese tourism diplomacy a win-win cooperation.