The impact of the Covid-19 on the tourism activities of Hungarian tourism entrepreneurs in Transcarpathia

Following the negative effects of the armed conflict its Eastern Ukraine in 2014, Ukraine's tourism has once again embarked on a path of development. However, tire growth us tourist traffic did riot take long, as the Covid-19 pandemic rapid/,v readied Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out in early 20711 The analysis of the latter's impact will not be addressed in this researc-h. Its all countries, the pandemic has had an inspect ott all areas ofpeople's lives, particularly affecting health. CCOtrOftly, education arid tourism sectors. Due to the rapid spread of the pandemic, governments had to react quickly to protect their populations. As a result, measures were introduced to restrict people's movement and contacts, such as closing airports, country borders, forcing the population to quarantine for weeks or months, to teletvorking, distance education, to ban events and close catering facilities. These measures were not implemented smoothly even in countries with a high level of development and a strong economy, and placed a particularly heavy burden on countries with medium or low levels of development, including Ukraine. Given these events, Ukraine was quickly affected by one negative impact after the other, one of the main losses being tourism industry and tourism-related companies. The subject of our study is to explore the impact oft/re Covid-19 pandemic on the tourism industry in one of Ukraine's regions, Transcarpathia. The case study was carried out among tourism companies of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine along the Ukrainian-Hungarian border in the course of the survey; questionnaires were sent out to g7 entrepreneurs who carried out a total of 167 tourists-related activities. Two issues were addressed in particular: How did the epidemic affect tourism businesses irt 2020? Haw did the companies under study react to the situation, i.e. how did they try to adapt to the unprecedented events? The investigation showed that. the entire lockdown, the various measures that were changing on almost a weekly basis, the uncertainty, completely pushed travelling to the background and made it impossible for tourism businesses to operate. 'there was not a single entrepreneur is our study who had not suffered losses due to the 2020 epidemic. Due to the epidemic arid/or disease control measures, the entrepreneurs' turnover fell by an average of 55 itt 2020 compared to tire previous year State aid was minimal to alleviate the damage suffered by entrepreneurs and only 20% of the surveyed enterprises received it. Dun n9 tire eat ire lockdown period, the majority of entrepreneurs (84%) tried to focus 011 tntSineSS development at the expense oftheir previous savings and tried to keep the people they employed with various success. However, the interviewed Hungarian tourism entrepreneurs have riot been able to really benefit from online sales; given the vulnerability of the sector, it is also necessary to develop businesses in an nataVarivc-14,ay, in terms or marketing, sales and electrical engineering in the future.