Latest Dental Tourism Figures Under Question

The Hungarian dental tourism sector welcomes 60,000 to 70,000 dental tourists every year, claims the local dental sector.

Since 2008, Budapest has become Europe’s dental capital due to budget flights and high dental prices in Western Europe. Most of the dental tourists visiting Budapest come from the UK, France and Scandinavia. Besides the capital, visitor numbers at the clinics in Győr, Mosonmagyaróvár and Sopron, in Western Hungary are popular with Austrian and German patients.

300 clinics and 3,000 employees operate the Hungarian dental tourism sector, welcoming 60,000 to 70,000 dental tourists every year, claims the local dental tourism industry. These figures have to be used with care as they are estimated by local dental tourism groups promoting dental travel exhibitions and are not official figures. These groups claim that nearly 90% of the annual income of the Hungarian health tourism sector, is based on dental tourism, but as Hungary has a huge spa and wellness tourism business, that is very unlikely.

The groups claim that according to the data of the Central Statistical Office (KSH), in 2014 4.6 million tourists spent 12.3 million nights in Hungary with 440,000 nights linked directly to the dental tourism. But neither the government or any other organisation collects data in this detail, so it is not known how an estimated 440,000 dental nights became 60 to 70,000 dental tourists.

If you look at the actual published online KSH figures there were 11 million tourists in 2014 that on average stay two nights. Using a small sample of 20,000 tourists, KSH say that this includes 3,163 visits for spas, wellness, medical or dental treatment and this may suggest a total of 2.7 million in this sector, Hungarian health and wellness tourism accounts for over 2 million international visitors a year. Nowhere do these or other KSH figures isolate either dental tourism or medical tourism.

Figures as high as 350,000 were once claimed as medical and dental tourists for Hungary. Back in 2012 the Medical Tourism Office claimed an estimated 70,000 dental tourists for 2011. Hungary has been losing out both to cheaper competitors and lower prices from dentists in what were source countries. Even 60,000 could be too high.