Administratively, Hungary is divided into 19 counties with the capital city of Budapest being independent of any county government. It is a landlocked country, situated in the Carpathian Basin. Its two longest rivers called Danube and Tisza divide Hungary into three parts: Dunántúl (“beyond the Danube”, Transdanubia), Tiszántúl (“beyond the Tisza”), and Duna-Tisza köze (“between the Danube and Tisza”).
Transdanubia, which stretches westward from the centre of the country towards Austria, is a primarily hilly region with a terrain varied by low mountains. These include the very eastern stretch of the Alps, Alpokalja, in the west of the country, the Transdanubian Mountains in the central region of Transdanubia, and the Mecsek Mountains and Villány Mountains in the south. The highest point of the area is the Írott-kő in the Alps, at 882 metres. The Little Hungarian Plain (Kisalföld) is found in northern Transdanubia. Lake Balaton and Lake Hévíz, the largest lake in Central Europe and the largest thermal lake in the world, respectively, are in Transdanubia as well.
The Duna-Tisza köze and Tiszántúl are characterised mainly by the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld), which stretches across most of the eastern and southeastern areas of the country. To the north of the Plain are the foothills of the Carpathians in a wide band near the Slovakian border. The Kékes at 1,014 m is the tallest mountain in Hungary and is found here.
Despite its relatively small size, the country is home to numerous World Heritage Sites and UNESCO Biosphere Reserves.
The National Federation of Rural and Agrotourism
The National Federation of Rural Tourism (FTOSZ back then) was established in 1994 to represent the interests of service providers operating in rural tourism.
FTOSZ has gone through an organizational transformation since 2001, leading it to become an association of 19 county organizations, thus now covering the entire country. They bring the nearly 2,000 hosts together. With the help of the federation’s certifying professionals, the hosts are able to provide the right quality for every service. As part of the transformation, it also assumed the “agro” adjective in the name of FATOSZ, indicating that agrotourism is an integral part of rural tourism. The most important tasks of FATOSZ, also enshrined in its bylaw, are to represent the economic and legal interests of those, who are engaged in rural tourism, to provide them with continuous and relevant information, to bring rural services to the market and to establish cooperation with national professional associations and organizations.
After the laid down process of the qualification, accommodations can get hold of a trademark, named „rural accommodation with sunflowers”. The basic purpose of the certification is to guarantee the quality of the services provided by the accommodation and to ensure, that these services meet with professional expectations, which are defined by FATOSZ.
Activities
