Hungary’s all-important tourism sector continues to show signs of healthy growth and expansion, with the most recently released figures demonstrating that more than 39.4 million tourists visited this Central European country of only 10 million residents in 2007.

This year’s visitor figures will almost certainly top 40 million, after the Q3 Hungarian Tourism Report detected a 2.8 percent increase in arrivals during the third quarter.

Much of the growth can be traced back to a relatively steep rise in the number of visitors from neighbouring Slovakia; this figure jumped by 6 percent. A larger number of Austrians were also visiting Hungary, with a rise in 10 percent in tourism figures.

Romania was the only neighbouring country from where the number of visitors arriving to Hungary declined, albeit by only very modest proportions.

As can be expected, Budapest’s Ferihegy International Airport is seeing a rise in passenger traffic as well. The annual growth rate in 2007 reached 4 percent. This means that Ferihegy served a record-breaking 8.6 million passengers last year.

The rise in the number visitors to Hungary is good news for foreign investors who purchased flats in Budapest and are now renting them out as holiday apartments.

The most recent tourism figures suggest that the number of visitors staying at hotels increased by noticeably smaller proportions than the rise in tourists in general.

This suggests that a growing number of visitors are replacing expensive hotels and cramped rooms with more spacious and economic holiday apartment rentals.