The goal of the research is to investigate the hotel innovation behavior in one of the most important tourism regions of Hungary. The Lake Balaton Region is a very popular area of the country with quite a short season (from the middle of June to August 20). The region is the second most visited area based on the number of guests and guest nights in Hungary. The topic of innovation plays a growing role in the Hungarian hotel sector as well, because competition is very high and keeping guests and employees can be a great challenge. The study involved both qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research aimed to identify the best practices of the Hotel Európa Fit****superior which introduced an “innovation by inspiring” strategy and applies several types of innovation in a highly recommended way. The respondents of the questionnaire included 28 hotel general managers (52% of the 54-person sample). The results showed a strong relationship between the type of the hotel and the number of innovations as well as the type of the hotel and the frequency of innovation.

The goal of the paper is to investigate the innovation behaviour of the hotels in the Balaton Region of Hungary and identify the best practice which is further analysed. The specific region has been chosen due to its popularity among Hungarian and foreign tourists, which is demonstrated by its second place in the number of guests and guest nights in the country. The research only considered those hotels which are members of the Hungarian Hotel and Restaurant Association and classified as three-, four-or five-star accommodation facilities. In the first stage the hotel general managers were asked to complete a questionnaire about the hotels' innovation behaviour. Then the best practice was identified and followed by an interview with the managers. There were 28 questionnaires completed, which is 52% of the hotels fitting the criteria. The results show that the definition of innovation is hard for the hotel general managers and hotels are focused on technological innovation, they do not concentrate on the environmental innovations and the most important barrier is the cost. The identified best practice hotel is Hotel Európa Fit****superior, which emphasises human resource and organisational innovation and introduces socalled 'innovation by inspiring'.