1. Introduction
Hungary, a relatively small, Central-European country, characterised by an open economy [
1] with limited natural resources, has considered the development of tourism as one of the most important drivers of economic development over the last half century [
2].
The comprehensive development of the tourism sector is one of the priorities of the current Hungarian government, which plans to increase the share of the tourism sector in Hungary’s GDP from the current 9.8% to 16% by 2030. For this purpose, at the end of 2017, the Hungarian government issued a National Tourism Development Plan. This plan identifies some key trends in world tourism, among others: “the need for experiences, emotions, and an increase in the value placed on travel” [
3].
Beside the political declarations on the importance of the tourism development sector (as a key possibility for the diversification of the Hungarian economy, which is heavily dependent on foreign automotive companies [
4,
5]), there are also some negative tendencies in tourism development. (1) The position of Hungary has been considerably worsened in international comparison: according to the rate of travel and tourism competitiveness index [
6], Hungary has fallen nine places. In 2015, the country was ranked 40th, but, in 2017, only 49th (at the same time, this rank is even higher than in the case of some neighbouring countries, e.g., Slovakia (59), Romania (68), and Serbia (95), but considerably lower than in the case of Croatia (32) or Slovenia (41). (2) The efficiency of the Hungarian tourism system is relatively low [
7,
8] due to the low value-added content of tourist services, high seasonality (the majority of guests arrive in the second half of July and the first half of August) [
9], and the geographic concentration of touristic attractions. (3) In previous tourism planning practice, considerations of sustainability had only marginal importance. A previous version of the current development strategy received considerable criticism for this [
10].
The flagship of Hungarian tourism is Lake Balaton (
Figure 1), the largest so-called “sea” in Central Europe, with a surface area of 594 km
2. There are numerous specific aspects and values of the Balaton geographic region in terms of natural geography, flora [
11], fauna [
12], history [
13], ethnography [
14] and culture [
15]. The northern part of the lake is a National Park [
16], but, from our point of view, the most important feature is the role of the Balaton in Hungarian tourism. Currently, the lake is the target of 13% of the total number of foreign tourist arrivals to Hungary. The share of Lake Balaton in domestic tourism, based on guest-nights, is around 23% [
17].
The history of tourism around the Balaton can be divided into three periods. Up to the Second World War it was a holiday resort for the middle class [
18]. The most rapid development and the “golden era” of Balaton tourism was in the communist period, from 1945 to 1989. At this time, considerable investments were made in mass-tourism development around the lake. On the one hand, the political regime tried to demonstrate that it supports recreation for the working class [
19], while, on the other hand, the tourism development contributed to the improvement of the country’s foreign exchange balance. At that time, Lake Balaton was a very important meeting point for separated families from East and West Germany. After the system-change, it became obvious that low quality, low efficiency tourism is not an alternative for Lake Balaton tourism, and intensive discussions began on further options for development [
20,
21]. According to the study of the Hungarian Court of Auditors, between 1990 and 2007, more than half a billion HUF (ca. 2 million Euros) had been spent from the state budget on different studies on the development of tourism at Lake Balaton [
22]. The only practically realised result of these studies was the introduction of a specific voucher system (Balaton Card). Owners of this card enjoy a range of benefits including free entry to tourist attractions, and discounts from retailers and stores, and on public transport. The Hungarian literature on economic geography and regional planning is full of concepts relating to the development of tourism at Lake Balaton [
23], but even today the lake is characterised by mass tourism [
24]. Under these conditions it seems to be a natural step to dis-burden the lake, at least partially, from mass tourism and re-orientate this kind of tourism towards quality-oriented rural tourism, based on the natural values of the region around the lake, but not directly on the shores of the lake itself. This would be a considerable step towards decreasing the environmental burden [
25] of the lake because it is well documented that rural tourism results in less burdensome impacts than mass tourism [
26].
The development of rural tourism in the Lake Balaton region is regarded as a more sustainable alternative compared to mass tourism. The size of the area within the jurisdiction of municipalities located around the Lake Balaton is nearly five times as large as the area of municipalities situated directly at the lake rural tourism could be considered more sustainable than mass tourism because tourists would be spread over a larger geographical area around the Lake. The partial re-orientation of tourism from the Lake to rural regions could be an important step to decrease the environmental burden (road traffic noise, exhaust emissions, and water-associated burden created by chemical sun protection factors). Decreasing seasonality could mitigate the over-burdened traffic infrastructure and congestion on roads especially in the high season. Furthermore, the re-orientation of tourism can give a new impetus to rural tourism by re-vitalising the socio-economic life in the Lake Balaton region. The development of rural tourism would further contribute to the enhancement of efforts to preserve and develop local agriculture and architectural values instead of losing them. Finally, a considerable migration to abroad and other regions of Hungary from the villages and towns of the Lake Balaton region can be observed. The consequence of this phenomenon is the abandonment of agricultural land and rural houses leading to the rapid degradation of agricultural landscape, architectural values and ethnographic treasures. The development of rural tourism offers an important opportunity to restore these negative tendencies to a certain extent.
Garcia-Ramon et al. [
27] proved that the participation of women in the creation and running of rural tourist attractions has contributed to their sensibilisation to the problems of environmental protection. Slee et al. [
28] demonstrated that rural tourism is more tightly embedded in the local economy than traditional forms of tourism, which is why this form of tourism generates more income and employment. Clark and Chabrel [
29] pointed out that well organised local tourism (e.g., a visitor pay-back scheme) can be an important contribution to decreasing the environmental burden and repairing environmental damage. Of course, rural tourism creates new problems from the point of view of environmental protection, which is why the classic guidelines for defensive tourism should be followed [
30]. Applying the categorization generally applied to differentiate forms of tourism [
31] it would seem that diverting tourism away from Lake Balaton to Hungary’s rural regions offers a good possibility to transform a proportion of current tourist activity from mass to soft forms of tourism. The development of rural tourism would be an important step towards the development of the region in general [
32].
Wine tourism is organically linked to agriculture [
34]. Wine and wine making has played a traditional role in Hungarian life and culture [
35]. One of the most important directions of Hungarian tourism is gastro-tourism, and wine tourism is an important part of this. Wine tourism in Hungary is an especially important possibility for development, because: (1) there are large variations in wine producing terroirs [
36]; (2) there are a large number of vine varieties [
37]; and (3) there is a very rich traditional architecture [
38] which often reflects the colourful variety of the Carpathian basin’s ethnic heterogeneity and the traditions of co-habitation of different cultures, from Jewish [
39] to Romanian [
40] and German. This serves as a backdrop for the activity, although they are employed mainly in the promotion of mass tourism. The preservation of vineyards is an important step towards sustainability because vines are able to prevent the soil degradation process [
41]. (Montella M.M. [
42] offers a detailed overview of another positive aspect of vine tourism as regards sustainability.)
In summary, it can be stated that the development of rural tourism is closely linked to sustainability, because it is well documented that: (1) the development of tourism can generate negative externalities and exercise an adverse effect on the environment, e.g., more intense transport, increasing noise, tree cover loss on land surface, etc. [
43]; (2) the touristic product is an extremely complex one, which necessitates the coordinated action of different stakeholders [
44,
45]; and (3) these theses are especially true for rural tourism, which is realised in an environment which is “virgin”, often under conditions of environmental protection, necessitating the coordinated action of different stakeholders for the creation of a competitive and sustainable touristic product [
2,
46].
The present study is structured as follows: after a short introduction and literature review, the research problem is presented.
Section 2 offers a description of the MACTOR model applied to the analysis of the position of different actors, as well as their strategies, and the procedure used to collect expert opinion.
Section 3 summarises the results of our study by highlighting the most important steps that should be taken to strengthen the sustainability of the Hungarian tourism system.
Section 4 offers short conclusions highlighting some generalizable lessons for other post-transition countries.
2. The Research Problem
Tourism is a key sector in Hungary. However, an important question arises: how can the tourism sector be further developed in such a way as to satisfy the following conditions: decreasing the environmental burden caused by mass tourism, and concentrating tourism geographically and seasonally in parallel with an enhancement of its income generating capacity? Based on our interviews high seasonality and considerable concentration of tourism demand causes socio-economic burden (congestion on roads, road traffic noise, exhaust emissions, etc.). This is in itself a multi-criteria optimization problem with considerable limitations because—naturally—the elasticity of demand for mass-tourism is relatively low due to these consumer’s sensitivity to price, who are rather conservative spenders, which is why it would be naive to suppose that families with small children do not wish to enjoy the hotels at Lake Balaton, or that young party-goers could be re-orientated towards rural tourism. It is probable that the demands of these tourists will be satisfied at Lake Balaton and at an increasing rate at the Adriatic Sea coast in Croatia. At the same time, it seems to be a realistic possibility to maintain or increase the income generating capacity of tourism in the region around Lake Balaton because, according to our hypothesis, a proportion of sand and sun oriented mass tourism can be replaced by rural tourism. The other example, namely wine tourism, demonstrates that this form of tourism is an important way of utilizing the natural and human qualities of the wine-producing regions.
It is an open-ended question as to how the rural tourism system can be optimised under the kind of conditions which prevail in a country where: (1) there is a lack of traditions of democratic, bottom-up decision making processes [
47]; (2) the social capital is low [
48]; and, as in other post-communist countries, (3) there is an attempt to improve public planning and the administrative system [
49] while taking sustainability into account.
From this, it follows that the goal of the current article is to determine how a touristic attraction can be transformed from one based on mass tourism to a more complex tourism destination by the integration of sustainable rural tourism; and how the problems related to the environment can be prevented and managed in a specific form of an extremely complex touristic attraction, i.e., in the case of wine tourism.
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Basic Principles
There were three basic paradigms of our analysis: (1) institutional economics [
50]; (2) principle–agent theory [
51]; and (3) strategic management [
52].
The so-called “French school of strategy” based on institutional economics [
53] considers the different socio-economic systems as an arena [
54] which has different groups of participants (actors, agents) who follow their specific interests. Godet M. [
55] proved that, by an appropriate simplification of the actors and the most characteristic features of their interests, it is possible to determine the chances different actors have to realise their goals. Based on this theory, he developed a method and algorithm for the analysis of social bargaining mechanisms. Godet M. [
55] can be described using the MACTOR (Matrix of Alliances and Conflicts: Tactics, Objectives and Recommendations) model. In the literature, this model has been used in different research fields: [
56,
57,
58,
59,
60,
61], but—obviously—different countries, regions and research problems do not offer the possibility to generalise the results.
One of the key concepts of the model is that the possibilities of actors to influence other actors are determined by their potential to influence (put pressure on) other actors directly or indirectly with the purpose of affecting their behaviour. The influence of Actor Aon Actor C is the sum of the direct and indirect influences of Actor A on Actor C.
The cells of the matrix express the intensity of the influence of any actor in a row on any actor in a column on a 0–4 scale, ranging from no influence to total influence. The matrix of direct and indirect influences (MIDI (Equation (1)) quantifies the sum of direct and indirect influences for each pair of actors.
The quantification of mutual influences can be characterised by a rectangular matrix. The cells of the matrix reflect the intensity of the influence of an actor in a row on an actor in a column [
62]. The intensity of the direct influence of one actor on another is measured on a 0–4 scale, from no influence to absolute influence, determining the existence of the respective actor.
The cells of the matrix of direct and indirect influences contain the sum of one direct and n − 2 indirect intensity relations.
In this way, the vector influences (I
a) and dependences (D
a) for each and every actor can be determined by Equations (2) and (3):
Based on the indicators above, a normalised value can be calculated for each of the actors:
Applying the vector ra, the matrix of influence-possibilities for each of the actors for different issues can be defined (Equation (5)).
The importance of each goal from the point of view of different actors is expressed by the Matrix of Actor–Objective. This is the so-called 1MAO matrix, in which the cells of the matrix contain the attitude of an actor towards a given goal in the form of a positive, 0, or negative sign. In the second phase, the 2MAO matrix is determined, which contains the intensity of these attitudes which have been determined for different actors, measured on a −4 to +4 scale, where −4 denotes the total negation of the given goal, and +4 denotes total support. The 3MAO matrix also considers the influence-possibilities of the different actors (Equation (5)).
This matrix is the basis of most of the analyses proposed by our method, because a number of important values are directly drawn from the 3MAO matrix. The mobilization coefficient (Equation (6)) quantifies how much the different actors are involved in the system of interests. The agreement (Equation (7)) and disagreement (Equation (8)) coefficients indicate how controversial the different issues are for each actor.
The 3MAO matrix is applied to obtain the convergence matrix (3CAA (Equation (9)) and divergence matrix (3DAA (Equation (10)). For each actor-pair, these matrices express how much they agree or disagree on different issues.
The ambivalence coefficient Equation (11) gives an indication of the expected stability of their potential alliances.
3.2. The Data Collection Process
The present study employed a self-designed interview method. Besides analysis of public declarations, face-to-face expert estimations were made with 18 stakeholders in Balaton tourism related fields and 15 stakeholders in the case of wine tourism. We conducted interviews with six researchers and lecturers from the academic sphere, nine experts from the tourism sector and three experts from the governmental sphere. We conducted interviews with six researchers and lecturers from the academic sphere (in the fields of tourism management, economics, rural development and landscape architecture). Nine experts represented the tourism sector at municipality, county and governmental level. In the case of wine tourism, five respondents represented the academic sphere (education in the fields of wine production, rural development, small business management and regional planning), four experts the governmental sphere (at municipality, county and governmental level), and six stakeholders were involved in activities related to wine tourism (in the Balaton, Etyek and Tokay wine regions).
This series of preliminary (explorative) interviews conducted with the purpose of outlining the set of relevant actors and interests was carried out between 2008 and 2013. The aim of this preliminary interview phase was to outline the most important stakeholder groups and the set of their potential objectives. As a result of these investigations, a conscious, robust and well-manageable set of actors and goals could be created. The protocol of the interviews with experts is presented in
Appendix A.
Before beginning the face-to-face interviews for the study, following the guidelines of leading professional associations [
63,
64,
65], the authors analysed the critical ethical aspects of the research. It was unanimously determined that, because the study was not funded, there is no conflict of interest. The Ethical Council of the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Debrecen, which hosts the two authors, has approved the concept and procedure of the research. The interviews were conducted in a separate room, and the respondents could not to meet each other, neither before nor after the interviews. The confidentiality of the respondents was maintained appropriately at all stages of the enquiry.
In setting up a pool of experts, a specific procedure was followed. We considered experts to be people: (1) who have a specific responsibility for decision-making in Balaton-tourism and wine tourism related fields; (2) who have proven their specific knowledge relevant for our research field by the publication of high–quality peer reviewed papers on topics related to the study; or (3) who have been especially active in professional social debates concerning regulation in printed and electronic media. The attitude of experts towards our questions has not been taken into consideration, neither in the choice of the experts, nor in the interview phase.
The list of potential participants was collected based on intensive research of publications, membership-lists of professional organisations and the personal recommendation of other experts (snowball method). In Hungary, the professional community is relatively small, which is why the potential circle of respondents was cross-checked by the authors.
In summary, the names of 105 experts were collected for the “sustainable Balaton” project and 45 experts for the “sustainable wine tourism” project. In the next phase, experts were selected who supposedly—in the opinion of at least two members of the authors’ community—have a more “holistic” approach to the issues investigated, without considering whether their attitude to the question was pro or contra. In this way, 98 experts were selected for the “sustainable Balaton” project and 40 experts for the “sustainable wine tourism” project. Seventy-eight respondents expressed their willingness to participate in the “sustainable Balaton” and 38 in the “sustainable wine tourism” research. Due to time and financial constraints, 68 and 30 face-to-face expert-interviews were carried out, respectively.
The quantification of the intensity of actor–actor influences, as well as actor–objective relations is a relatively difficult process [
66] which developed in an evolving manner. As we experienced, filling out the input matrices in the form of MS Excel worksheets for research was a very time-consuming process, often causing conflict because it was extremely difficult to achieve a general common interpretation of different scales. That is why a semi-structured interview was used [
67]. The conversion of the verbal estimations was carried out during the report phase, with the help of the researchers. The only task of the researchers was to help to interpret the different scales. This quantification technique proved to be an efficient practical method for achieving consistency in input data for analysis.
The most important socio-economic indicators of the respondents are summarised in
Table 1. It is obvious that the socio-economic position, as well as the relatively high level of qualifications of respondents offers a favourable possibility to acquire a relatively wide and reliable picture of the current landscape of actors and forces shaping the socio-economic environment of tourism in general, and rural tourism in particular, in the case of Hungary. It should be emphasised that with this type of analysis we could not follow the well-established opinion research methods because: (1) representativeness as a basic postulate of this type of research is not applicable since it is impossible to define the “population”; and (2) the length of the interviews does not allow us to have a high enough number of respondents to carry out a statistical analysis of the results. At the same time, this research concept seemed to be useful for the analysis of the relevant actors and their goals.
In the design of the panel of respondents, our aim was not to achieve representativeness, because—due to the wide and diverse sets of stakeholders—this would be impossible. The high proportion of specialists working in higher education and academic research offered a favourable opportunity to obtain the information from specialists with a broad overview and a perspective on the area analysed.