VII.1. The notion and significance of water tourism

Water tourism is a type of recreational sport and free time activity, the target area of which is a natural or artificial water surface, riverside or lakeside and its environs. Its emergence goes back to the development of vehicles suitable for water transport, as well as man’s various leisure time activities done in the vicinity of a water surface.   (Bánhidi 2013). Various types of water tourism exist depending on the water, including river tourism, lake tourism and nautical tourism. By the activity there are spa tourism, water tourism (kayaking, canoeing, boating, sailing), angling tourism water adventure tourism and extreme water sport tourism. The individual types of water tourism may intertwine with each other, or with other trends of tourism. Examples include ecotourism, rural tourism, youth tourism.

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The areas, which are suitable for water tourism, including rivers, lakes, ponds are considered of exceptional importance in Hungarian tourism. Near Hungary’s shallow lakes, backwaters and those sections of our rivers, where the current is not very strong, there are sandy beaches and the temperatures make it possible to enjoy a relatively long bathing/swimming season. (Kollarik 1991).

Water tours are part of water tourism. Its active participants use their own physical strength to move their vehicles from camp site to camp site, or they stay at one place as base camp and organize tours from there. The kayaks and the canoes are the most frequently used vehicles, and sport equipment. Water touring is a very complex form of tourism, since sport and recreational activities are done in water, on water, and on land, too. It is not by accident that water tourism has become the most rapidly developing type of sport tourism. The challenge and experience of a sport activity is combined in it with man’s natural desire to spend his free time in or near water. In addition to the fact that waters represent basic conditions for this type of tourism, their natural environment serves as the main attraction and motivation for tourists’ sport and recreational activities.  

There are some people among water lovers who are happy with what the water and its natural environment can offer them. They are those people who would do activites there even if they could not take hot showers every day or could not do any shopping in the local shop or would not be able to arrange the delivery of their baggage. A certain degree of determination and preparedness are needed for this kind of  ’nomadic’ life on water. But there is an increasing number of those people, who, in addition to adoring nature and seeking adventures, need the convenience of a well-equipped camp site, tourist facilities and a range of supplementary services (Barna et al. 2012). It is especially true today that basic touristic infrastucture and suprastructure are needed in water tourism as well. Suprastructure is what a destination can offer in the area of accomodation and catering, and, the sum of all services tourists may use. (Michalkó 1999).