Spatial differentiation of tourism intensity and land take in Lake Balaton’s lakeshore settlements, Hungary

Lake Balaton is Hungary’s largest leisure destination, where seasonal demand concentrates in a narrow lakeshore corridor. This paper analyzes tourism intensity and long-term land take in the Balaton priority tourism area (Government Decree 429/2020, 2020), with a comparative focus on the northern and southern lakeshore settlement groups. Tourism dynamics are measured from Hungarian Central Statistical Office data (2019-2024) using arrivals, overnight stays, and foreign-share indicators, with tourism intensity expressed as tourists and foreign tourists per 1,000 residents and benchmarked against national and Budapest values. Land take is approximated by artificial-surface extent and share from TeIR indicators linked to CORINE Land Cover (1990-2018), compared between the northern and southern shore groups and the national average. Results show strong spatial polarization: two-thirds of overnight stays occur in lakeshore settlements, and tourism intensity along the shore is several times higher than national and Budapest benchmarks. Although the northern shore records higher absolute visitor volumes in most years, the southern shore consistently exhibits higher population-normalized tourism intensity and higher artificial land-cover ratios. The study contributes an integrated comparative reading of absolute tourism volume, relative tourism intensity, and accumulated artificialization, providing a more differentiated basis for understanding development pressure in intensively used lakeshore areas.