The mainline of our research was to show the main elements of creative tourism in Budapest: first of all whether they exist at all, and if so, what types of supplies they involve. Despite the main points found in the secondary literature the focus of our interest was not to list new opportunities created by creative tourism, but to see what further services have appeared besides the traditional ones that need the activity and creativity of the tourist .This means our aspect is new in terms of what approaches have appeared up till now in scholarly summaries.
The whole research spanned over a year: this present study summarises the first period between September and December 2014. We listed and summarized the elements of Budapest Tourism targeted by city visitors that need special activity and creativity. We did field work and we took part personally in some programmes (colour run, exit games, trans-dance) and we analysed homepages.
Results
During the research we surveyed several touristic opportunities where creativity and activity are significant elements of the service. A part of our results was to list and categorize the findings to make a clear overview of the surveyed supply according to different aspects like novelty and location.
The following categories were characterized:
- Traditional elements of Budapest Tourism, - Partly or wholly new elements of supply,
o new interpretations of traditional elements, o absolutely new elements of supply,
- Creative supplies and events at locations in the vicinity of Budapest labelled as Budapest attractions.
Due to limitations of volume this present paper wishes to show only one of the three categories i.e. the analysis of partly or wholly new elements of Budapest tourism supply.
While examining the creative side of tourism supply it is important to underline that there are more and more often strange elements like unusual locations or means of transportation, new thematic structures etc. to be spotted included in traditional supplies such as city tours, catering, theme parks, museums and
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events reflecting new initiations. Such unusual terrains of catering were ruin pubs or wine dinners introduced roughly a decade ago in Budapest. As far as theme parks are concerned besides the Budapest Zoo and the Amusement park new ideas were realised as paintball courses and challenge parks. Traditional city tours were completed with unique opportunities like the River Ride (floating city bus) or Segway tours, or Budapest 100 (walking tours showing Budapest buildings turning 100 years old that given year with the opportunity to get excess to buildings otherwise closed for the public). The so-called Retek (wing) tour gave special opportunities for team building in the stalactite cave of Mátyás Hill.
On the basis of these facts we created two sub-categories in our system under the main point of partly or wholly new Budapest supplies where here are on the one hand possibilities where traditional elements are offered in a new way, or, there are the ones that are absolutely new.
Traditional supply in new interpretation are phenomena like city tours completed with street performances (ghost tour), crime dinners, and one of the running races called colour run. Creative services that turned up without any antecedents were listed among the absolutely new supplies.
The wide range of the latter possibilities was further divided according to the quality and the extent of activity.
Sport events:
- city barrier run – ’Burger King Brutal Run Budapest 1.0’
It was first organized in Budapest in 2014 (but before that in Nyáregyháza in 2012) It is a real novelty because of the nature of the barriers typical for cities. Because of the huge number of applies after several extensions of the race the final number was fixed in 1700.
- Underground bicycle race ’Mofém – Underworld Cup’
It has been organised since 2010 in the unique cellar system of Kőbánya beer brewery. There are five races according to sex and age with the participation of maximum 70 persons per race. The setting is the 3-8 m wide underground corridor with several bends and sometimes absolutely dark Locations with programs needing significant physical and intellectual skills:
- Covered wind channel –Skyward,
It has been functioning since 2013 at the northern tip of Csepel Island. It is an absolutely unique service of this kind. There are such services only in eight other towns. You can try interior free fall in 3-60 minutes periods. The flight is preceded by more than an hour long preparation and practice. Only groups of a small number can use it in pre-arranged points of time.
- laser force,
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Since 2011 the number of Budapest courses have reached the number11.
You can fight with laser in special equipment. There are two groups of 3-10 members fighting with each other in 1-2 hours. There are outdoor and indoor opportunities, the latter ones are often in out-of-use factory halls.
Further services needing activity:
- exit games,
The first such place opened in 2011 and the number increased significantly by 2013. By 2014 there were almost a hundred such places in Budapest.
They are mostly in indoor places and you can reach the aim by solving various tasks of wit and skill. Normally there are small number groups (2-6) and the duration is usually around 60 minutes
- trans-dance,
This service appeared on the palette a few years ago as a result of the increasing interest in spiritual topics. Due to its nature the service is available for smaller groups of maximum 20 persons usually on a once -a-month basis .The aims is to get into a special mental state with the use of hearing and motions without seeing. It can even lead to a better psychological state. The duration of the activity is 1,5 hours.
The above examples prove our hypothesis that the Budapest tourism supply is going through permanent changes and renewals. It is also evident, that these services need both the activity of the participants and the creativity of the service. These points were reinforced by the detailed analysis of two creative activities: the exit rooms and the brutal run, respectively.
Exit games
There are several internet collection pages (www.szabaduloszobak.hu, www.exitgames.hu, https://exitgames.com) to show offers of exit rooms sorted according to various aspects. These pages that gave the basic data for our research contained 57 different sites in Budapest in 2014.
As a result of a detailed analysis of these we reviewed and structured the games along thematic aspects, duration, allowed/suggested number of participants, and prices. Furthermore we examined the location of the houses in Budapest and the quality of services where there was a possibility to do so.
The 99 games in 7 sites can be structured according to 7 categories (see fig 1).
In case of any theme the common feature is that you can get to the opening of the door by solving several special, often extreme tasks.
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Categories Theme categories Number
of items 1. Breakout (prison break, getting out of a cellar,
a cabin or an ancient Egyptian tomb etc.) 28 2.
Investigation in pursuit of a (murderer, burglar, thief, lost jewellery, missing person, map, documents or any other kind of secret)
19 3. Movies (fairy tales, James Bond, cult movies) 12 4. Travelling (roundtrip, jungle themed, outer
space, back in time, futuristic) 13
5. Adult and horror (age limit) 6
6. Education (chemistry, geography, Hungary) 3
7. Other 18
Table 1 Thematic of Budapest exit houses, 2014 Source: www.szabaduloszobak.hu, www.exitgames.hu
The task in most cases (28) is the breakout itself from among not everyday circumstances or locations. The site is always created according to the nature of the task and is usually thrilling, narrow, tidy or untidy dark or light-full, noisy or still fitting the game. Investigation is also a frequent topic (19 cases), the investigation of a crime as it is shown on the tables. The tasks to solve is often built around a well-known movie (12 cases) or around a motif of travel (13 cases). There are also age limit topics in not more than 0.5% cases (6).
Education and playful teaching is the aim of games only in 3% of the cases.
The time given for the tasks is 60 minutes in most of the cases, but there are different durations as well. In some cases two games may link which means you can get from one game space directly to the other. In such cases the duration is doubled of course. When the tasks need more time to solve programs may be 80 or 90 minutes long.
Because of the usually small sizes of the rooms and interiors the number of participants is usually 2-6 persons. It is possible to accept a bigger number of people if visitors can play simultaneously in several rooms. In such cases 24-30 people can visit the place with different groups playing in the rooms parallel.
The examined services show a homogeneous picture in terms of prices as well.
In most cases HUF 10.000-12.000/2-6 persons is the average, but there are all kinds of discounts up to 20-50% on coupon or student card basis, or if the puzzle of the game is successfully solved. To get a discount coupon for another game is also characteristic. After reviewing the examined supply we can say the lowest price is HUF 7500/2-6 person groups whereas the highest price is HUF 14.900/2-6 persons group. In some cases the price is defined on a per person basis, and is usually around HUF 3000/person. In comparison with the group tickets in case of maximum number of persons this price category is the highest.
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An important characteristics from the point of view of tourism is that sometimes these services are available in English (26). An even higher per cent of services (50 %) advertise their exit rooms in English on their web pages. There are at the same time locations where the games can only be played in Hungarian since the descriptions, the texts of the tasks, the evaluation of the situations and all the information cards are in Hungarian.
In this type of service another innovation has appeared lately called second generation exit games (urban exit). There is usually some kind of investigation task with role play included and the game itself is not restricted to a room interior, but the streets and the surrounding district are also involved.
Services seem to have been designed for very definite target groups such as young people, families with small children (family friendly locations with fairy tale thematic) and school groups (educational games). Some exit rooms are operated by traditional providers like Gellért Szálló (Hotel Gellért) and Király Fürdő (King’s Spa) and several ruin pubs. There are games of different difficulty levels available.
Our research showed evidently an evaluative process having started to appear although the phenomena of exit games are absolutely new. This is not only the interest of the supplier but can also to be explained by the wide supply and the growing interest. Among the places we studied there are only 13 where visitors can evaluate the games if they wish on a 5 scale Likert-scale visitors can assess factors in ’theme-creativity-difficulty’. Votes range from a few up to more than a hundred showing that evaluation process has started but it is not enough to draw consequences.
As an illustration we can say the following: in case of 13 games the lowest values were game/theme 4.42, creativity 4.33, and difficulty 3.37. As a result of the fast growing supply providers are keen on making themselves characteristically different from one another by underlining special features and opportunities. Among the mottos on the TripAdvisor to call attention you can find ’The most difficult game - only a 25% of the groups could break out’ ’it can be played in English’ the best price/value ratio service’, ’also for school classes’
’with a chocolate fondue party’ ’with a pizza party’ ’birthday with fireworks’
’the aim is to get in’. To raise interest and continuous innovation have become basic demands in case of these services.
Burger King Brutal Run Budapest 1.0
Among the numerous running races ’Brutal run’ was a real novelty in summer 2014. The extreme obstacle race introduced new elements into this service. The aim was to get the urban population to move and to make running popular while giving excellent programs for tourists staying in Budapest. It can be regarded as an element of creative supply because unusual obstacles needed a creative
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attitude both from the side of the provider and of the participant. The 4.5 km long race course had 31 obstacles including stadium stairs, foam tunnel, slide, bus-running, container with icy water, rubber mountain, slalom, rope-wall, water course, ditch, bench jump, barrier-climb, dark corridor, etc. The obstacles were created so that they should be entertaining, urban-like and possible to perform.
Out of the more than 1500 participants of the first Budapest race 2% were foreigners (Slovenians, Slovakians, Ukrainians, Austrians, Americans and Turkish) and almost 50 % came from the (Hungarian) country. These latter two categories include the tourists. The races were started in 100 people groups in every half an hour. The ratio of males and females was 3:2 and their average age was 30+. 185 people registered from some sports club (12%), the remaining people chose the event as leisure time activity.
Registration fee ranged from HUF 5.000 to HUF 14.000 depending on type and period. Discount was given to students and pensioners. Chip timing, refreshments, goal package and medical service if needed were included in the registration fee which was adapted to the usual tariff of mass sport events. Due to its nature running races depend highly on weather. If the event is organized in the summer high season of tourism nice weather can be expected. Already after the registration to the first event international presence can be examined both among the competitors and among the fans (irrespective of the weather).
Organizers of sports events – our researches proved – look for novelties attracting interest increasing creative and active touristic elements in Budapest.
Creative elements in terms of space and time
To analyse the location of creative touristic supply – above all the absolutely new elements – was a part of the research. Locations of this category are indicated on the map below (Picture 1)
The territory separated on the map with a thick black line is the historical city centre of Budapest with all the elements of traditional city tour. It can be well seen that more than half of the exit rooms are located in the same area making two consequences evident. A huge number of cellars and flats out of use in the city centre can become utilized in this way whereas it is also visible that the new services were deliberately located in the area easily approachable for tourists. It should also be underlined that many of these sites are outside the central zone, thus including territories into tourism supply areas.
Exit rooms do not produce much noise, so they do not disturb local residents.
The same is not true for shooting ranges (SR) a skywards (SW) which are built into industrial sites not in use for a longer time. Laser force sites (X) and extreme obstacle competitions (BR) underworld bicycle races (UR) are located outside the traditional tourist areas. These services actually link locations into the blood circulation of tourism totally out of use before. Kőbánya beer brewery
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cellar system for example has already provided special tours and events during the past years producing unique experiences. Registration and booking data show tourists seeking novelty are not frightened by the distance from the centre.
The location itself is a significant element of getting to know local people and gaining new experiences. During the way to the site the visitor can get more information about the city and can get ready for the task to do.
Picture 1 The location of creative tourism supply in relation to the traditional city tour stations, 2014 Source: own research
As far as time factors are regarded we can claim these services are available throughout the year which means they broaden non-seasonal tourism supplies.
During the summer peak season the opening hours are even longer because of a higher number of tourists. Running and bicycle races are usually organized in August. The organization of the next race starts already during the previous one.
Another addition to time dimension is, that registration is needed in advance because the number of participants is limited. Summer season 2015 will give us further information in terms of time-dimension.
Summary
The goal of our research was to examine the elements of creative tourism possibilities in Budapest. The first step was to reveal whether such a wing of tourism existed at all. Unlike other researches of the field of creative tourism we did not focus on opportunities given by creative industries but we examined whether Budapest tourism supply provides creative services for tourists. There
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were two examined cases: when the creativity of the provider is realised in the supply and ones that need creativity from the tourists. Since in city tourism there is a definite demand toward activity supply we looked for elements that fulfil expectations both of activity and creativity. The positive result of our research is that we found a wide range of such services. The examined services were structured into categories to make a framework for further researches. In this present study we focused on opportunities that proved absolutely new without any antecedent such as exit rooms and brutal running. Exit house show a huge increase both in terms of number and thematic. As far as Brutal run is concerned it is a novelty because of its extreme obstacle race course.
Detailed analysis showed that Budapest does have an intensive creative supply permanently increasing adding much to the traditional services of the city. We could also demonstrate that besides traditional locations these places bring new sites into the blood circulation of tourism broadening the territory of services.
The above findings summarize the first part of our research focusing on Budapest creative tourism. These results are very telling and raise further questions.
Further researches will focus on whether the broadening of creative tourism supply will result in a higher number of visitors, and, whether a bigger amount of these opportunities make Budapest more creative i.e. whether in comparison to other cities any element will be especially characteristic.
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