How do we see Lake Balaton?
Guest nights tell you how many people stayed in a destination. They don't tell you how those people felt. The Balaton Good Place Index measures the state of the whole Lake Balaton Resort Area — not in traffic or revenue, but in how residents, tourism businesses and visitors experience the region. A shared yardstick, so that Balaton becomes a better place year after year.
The Balaton Good Place Index in 2026
We always knew it; now we have measured it: Balaton is a good place — far more so than not. And the eight dimensions show where development is worth the effort.
One number, eight dimensions and three perspectives
A handful of figures keep circulating about Lake Balaton: the water temperature, the price of a lángos, the length of the weekend traffic jam. Each is true on its own, but none of them says what kind of place Balaton is. Until now, Balaton has measured its own traffic. This survey — for the first time — measures whether it is a good place for those who live here, work here and come here, with the same method every year.
Respondents from three groups
One common scale
Every question was rated on a seven-point scale, which we convert into a score between zero and one hundred. Fifty is the midpoint of the scale: anything below it means the overall assessment is unfavourable.
Dimensions, equally weighted
Perception, Offer, Service quality, Competitive position, Liveability, Mobility, Environment, Governance. None carries more weight than another, because it is precisely the job of the survey to reveal how much each of them matters.
Balaton is more than its visitor numbers
The index starts from the premise that a destination's performance is not the same as the volume of its tourism. Balaton's value is that it is a good place to live, to work and to visit — tourism is at once a beneficiary of that and a risk to it. That is why the index measures liveability, environment, mobility and governance as well, not only the offer and service quality. And that is why the state of Balaton cannot be discussed without the people who live here. The survey is also a shared commitment: municipalities, businesses, tourism management and residents working together so that Balaton is a better place every year than it was the year before.
Thirty-eight points separate the strongest dimension from the weakest
64.0 points is a statement in itself: residents, businesses and visitors together see Balaton as a good place, well above the midpoint of fifty — far more a good place than not. The same number also sets the direction for development: the actionable information is in how the eight dimensions compare with each other, with values ranging from — to — points. The region excels in what it means to people, and scores below the fifty-point midpoint in how it is governed. Click a row for details.
The visitor is satisfied, the resident is under pressure
Three different kinds of experience came back about the same region. The difference is a finding in itself: it shows that the difficulties do not appear where the visitor goes.
Of the eighty-two questions, fifteen received an unfavourable score below fifty points. Nine come from the resident questionnaire and six from the business questionnaire — of the visitors' thirty-four questions, not one. Balaton's difficulties currently lie in local everyday life and in the governance environment, not in the visitor experience. This is not a state of rest but a window for intervention: in the long run, local tensions reach the visitor experience too.
The index could be calculated for seven districts
In seven of the resort area's eleven districts there were enough responses for the index to be interpretable. Pick a district from the list or on the map for its detailed profile. There are no municipality-level results: a single municipality yields a few dozen responses at most, which is not enough for a reliable figure — the district is the smallest unit that can still carry the measurement.
The map shows the full administrative area of each district; the survey covers the 180 municipalities that belong to the resort area. Boundaries: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The ranking should be read with care. The seven districts are spread across twelve points in total, far less than the thirty-eight points between the dimensions. The two leading districts are less than one point apart, which is within what the measurement can distinguish. The two ends of the field are interpretable — the Keszthely and Balatonfüred districts above the regional average, the Siófok and especially the Tapolca district below it — the positions in between are not. In the four missing districts the result is not poor; the data is scarce.
The eight weakest and the eight strongest questions
Behind the index stand eighty-two concrete statements. The weak side narrows down to two themes: the protection of the lake and the landscape, and who decides and how. On the strong side stand attachment and wayfinding.
Lowest scores
Highest scores
Of the fifteen questions below fifty points, seven belong to Governance, four to Environment, three to Competitive position and one to Mobility. In the other four dimensions not a single question falls below fifty.
Balaton does not face a performance problem but a coordination problem
The visitor is satisfied, the offer is strong, the attachment is exceptional. What is weak is, without exception, something no single actor can solve alone: protecting the lake, managing seasonal pressure, making decisions visible, the operating conditions of businesses. Five conclusions, each with its basis in the data.
Attachment is the region's strongest — and most underused — resource
Perception, at 84.4 points, is the highest and least divisive dimension: it is equally high in every segment of the population — permanent residents and second-home owners, those who make a living from tourism and those who don't. This attachment does not need to be created; it needs to be mobilised.
The problem is not in the visitor experience
Of the fifteen weak questions, nine are from residents, six from businesses and none from visitors. According to the visitor, accommodation is fine, information is available and public spaces are well kept; according to the resident, parking is unbearable, the lake is inadequately protected and there is no say in decisions. Both experiences are true at the same time.
The poor rating of governance is partly a visibility issue — and that is good news
Municipalities rate at 82 points that they take residents' quality of life into account in tourism decisions; residents rate the effect of the same at 47. Transparency of decisions: 69 according to municipalities, 50 according to residents; consultation with stakeholders: 64 versus 45. The municipality reports on what it does; residents on what they perceive of it. The task is not to make more decisions but to make existing ones traceable.
On protecting the lake there is complete agreement. This is the shared agenda.
Whether Balaton's water quality, shoreline and landscape values are adequately protected: 33.2 points, the second-lowest value in the survey. There is no district where residents are satisfied. In the open-ended answers — by an independent method — the ecological state is the second most frequent theme, in 26 per cent of the comments. In a region fragmented across 180 municipalities it is rare for everyone to agree on something. Here they agree.
The pressure is local, the framework is national
Parking and traffic pressure (32.4 points) varies by more than thirty points between districts: a local issue that calls for local solutions. Investment incentives (36.8) and labour costs (41.6) are uniformly low everywhere: they are not decided in the municipalities. Confusing the two is the most common mistake.
41% of the fixable gap is within local, municipal competence, 32% is national, and 27% is what regional tourism management can move on its own.
What depends on the municipalities: managing parking and traffic, awareness of local decisions, involving residents, the pressure on individual settlements. Balaton's map of problems does not match the map of any single actor's competences — which is why a shared yardstick is needed.
The measurement only becomes a result if we act together
The index is not a status report but the first step of a cycle: measurement leads to evaluation, evaluation to a programme, the programme to intervention — and whether it worked is shown by the next measurement. The study assigns ten intervention packages to the fifteen weak questions and to residents' suggestions, each with a responsible level and an indicator that can be tracked in the next survey.
Where we start — five commitments for the first year
This number is made of the time of 1,048 people
Thank you to everyone who answered in the summer of 2026: to the residents and second-home owners who found the time even in the middle of the season; to the business owners, who are the strictest critics of their own operating conditions; to the visitors who filled it in during their holiday; and to the 34 municipalities that were the first to put their own work on the scales. Special thanks to the 127 respondents who also told us what they think in their own words in the open-ended question — we read every one of them.
And thank you to the distribution partners — the Tourinform offices, the municipalities and the professional organisations — without whom the questionnaire would not have reached 180 municipalities. [list of partners / logo row — after consultation]
“The goal, in my view, is not an even bigger summer crowd but a higher-quality, longer-season and more sustainable Balaton, where it is good to be a guest, but just as good to live, work and run a business all year round.”
resident · open-ended question, 2026“Without a healthy, viable Balaton there will be no tourism either!”
resident“There should be a forum where businesses can voice their opinions.”
residentThe resident questionnaire ended with a single open-ended question, with no pre-set answers. 127 people used it, and half of the comments were not complaints but ready-made suggestions. The most frequent themes: governance and trust (28% of comments), the ecological state of the lake (26%) and developing the offer (23%) — the same ones the index measures as the weakest dimensions. Most of those who took a position on tourism did not ask for less of it but for a different kind: a longer season, higher quality, a broader economic base.
How the value is built
The calculation is identical every year and the order of the steps is fixed. The procedure is public so that anyone can recompute the result.
Seven-point scale
Every question was rated on a scale from 1 to 7. Where a respondent could not judge a question, the answer is treated as missing: it pulls the result neither down nor up.
Reversed items
For two negatively worded statements — on traffic pressure and on the threat to the lake — the scale is reversed, so that a higher score always means the more favourable situation.
Conversion to 100 points
Question score = 100 × (mean − 1) ÷ 6. A mean of 1 gives 0 points, 4 gives 50, 7 gives 100. Fifty is the midpoint of the scale: above it the assessment is favourable, below it unfavourable.
Group-level averages with territorial balancing
For each dimension we calculate separately how many points each group gives it: first by district, as the average of the group's questions in that dimension, and from these the Balaton-level value: for residents weighted by the districts' 2026 resident population (KSH), for businesses and visitors as the equal-weight average of the districts. So neither the number of questions a group received nor which district sent more responses makes a difference.
Sample-size threshold
A group only counts if it reaches the threshold: 15 valid responses for residents, 10 for businesses and visitors. Without this, the opinion of a handful of people would appear as a full-fledged result.
The index
A dimension is the average of the remaining groups, and the index is the average of the eight dimensions. Equal weights at both levels, because it cannot be known in advance which dimension matters how much. The same six steps are run for every district; a district index is calculated only if all eight dimensions are available and at least two stakeholder groups reach their threshold.
How much change counts as movement
| Index | more than 1 point | The average of eight dimensions, so it moves slowly; sample composition alone can shift it by close to one point. |
| Dimension | more than 2 points | The average of two or three groups; above two points the change is a meaningful signal. |
| Question | more than 5 points | With small samples question-level values fluctuate; above five points the change is probably substantive. |
What the survey does not tell you
The index measures perception, not factual data. If the perceived water quality deteriorates, it does not follow that measured water quality has deteriorated too — and vice versa. The two say most when read together. The survey offers no causal explanation, is not a ranking, is not a key for allocating funds, and produces no municipality-level result.
Why the municipal questionnaire is missing
A municipal questionnaire was also run and received 34 responses. Their territorial distribution was uneven, however, and since every group carries equal weight, 34 responses would have counted as much as several hundred from residents. The municipal responses are therefore analysed separately; bringing them into the index is a goal of the next survey.
The real result begins with the second survey
A single year's value is a baseline. The survey says something about the region once the direction of change is visible too — which is why we plan it for the long term, with an unchanged method. The next result will not appear on a new page but here, with a year selector.
The first full data collection. The index value is 64.0 points — this is the reference point.
This is where it becomes clear whether the survey is repeatable and whether the sample composition is stable. Tasks: expanding the municipal sample and covering the missing districts.
Two movements already draw a direction, not just a one-off change.
By then it will be clear which questions perform weakly and which themes are missing from the survey — for instance shoreline development and seasonality, which residents already raise unprompted.
