After returning from the Asia Pacific fieldwork in May, I devoted my summer for preparing the thesis to be in line with the original schedule of the course. Finding the suitable topic did not waste my time as it was born even in February when the Hungarian national airline, Malév went bankrupt. Hungary remained without a flag carrier and this fact intrigued me to look up what changes will come along this event in the tourism industry.

Hungarian TDM student Edit Rakos

To be more specific, I chose Budapest as the main tourism destination in the country that is tightly linked to air transport. During my exploratory research I met challenges such as the early stage to foresee impacts on the long term or to stay away from political standpoints. My report presents a time session but emphasizes the dynamism of the case that may end up in totally new situation by the other day. Due to the actuality, the media and press extensively deal with the subject and this meant a good basis to collect background information. Statistical data and professional opinion were gained from relevant organizations such as the airport, hotel association or the national tourism office. All the gathered data made up the case study chapter that has been analysed within the theoretical frame of the research.

Tourism has been approached from the aspect of complex adaptive system theory that helped to explore how the system reacts for a disturbance in the local context. The implication of such theory might be useful in tourism since it calls the attention for turbulence that appears time to time and could be reduced or avoided by preparing for it in advance. The awareness of critical events projected forth the application of crisis management theory, consistently. Although Malév had been struggling for years from indebtedness and unprofitability, the bankruptcy was unexpected. However, the system as a complex cluster of agents reacted in a dynamic way.

Finally, by taking all the so-far impacts on different market segments into account, I drew conclusions and made recommendations in order to sustain and stimulate tourism growth in Budapest. This and similar event(s) come in handy opportunities for future research.