The competition requires settlements to create decorative green areas, especially by planting flowers, involving the local community. The organizers hope the improvements will turn competing settlements into “tourist magnets.” The competition itself has been running for 25 years.
“It’s been a record year after a record year in Hungarian tourism, and itʼs no different in the case of the Virágos Magyarország contest, which is celebrating its anniversary,” said Zoltán Guller, managing director of the Hungarian Tourism Agency (MTÜ).
As half of the municipalities in Hungary have less than 1,000 inhabitants, the competition has changed its application categories. There are brackets for villages under and over 1,000 inhabitants, towns with a population under and over 50,000, and a separate category for districts of Budapest.
Entries will be judged by a panel of experts including 100 gardeners and landscape architects, as well as city and village caretakers. Family-friendly and accessibility-conscious infrastructure developments will receive extra points in this year’s competition. Projects with multilingual tourist information spots will also be rewarded.
The recipients of the two grand prizes (one for best village and one for best town) will be named in the fall (MTÜ could be no more specific about the date when asked by the BBJ), and will represent Hungary in 2019’s “Entente Florale Europe” horticultural contest, established to recognize municipalities and villages in Europe for excellence in horticultural displays.
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