About us
Szallas Group, the largest regional player of the CEE region, is proof of the scalability of the local-to-local strategy in the competitive technology and customer service driven online travel agency market. Built as a merger of the local champions of the domestic digital travel products of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Poland.
With 12 online travel products, more than 87 thousand bookable accommodation provider partners and a team of over 350 top-of-their-game employees, our goal is to provide the smoothest and cheapest domestic and cross-country reservation experience to the 90 million citizens of Central Eastern Europe.
Group history
Locations
Budapest
Szallas.hu Inc. and Szallas and Utazas Inc.
One of our Hungarian offices is placed in the prime Buda hill location and can provide a high-quality work environment for 70 employees. The Group management, the Hungarian management and the marketing, sales and finance teams are working in this office. The majority of the discount and travel agency product team is also located in the Budapest office.
Miskolc
Szallas.hu Inc.
The largest office of the Group is located in Miskolc, Hungary. It was the home of the founding team of Szallas.hu. Now it’s occupied by IT development, the Hungarian and cross-country customer service teams, the HR department, the Experience tourism team and part of the Hungarian finance team – more than 150 employees in total. The 800 sqm office has been designed to meet the standards of a 21st century workplace.
Liberec
Hotel.cz a.s.
We opened our Czech office in the country’s fifth-largest city, Liberec, in 2007. Our years here have given us remarkable opportunities. Our local team of over 50 employees is building the Hotel.cz, Penzion.cz and Spa.cz products and serving our more than 100 thousand customers each year.
Cluj-Napoca
Travelminit International
Have you ever been to Cluj-Napoca, also known as the heart of Transylvania? We highly recommend it! You have the opportunity to discover a beautiful big city, full of history and hospitable people. Here you can find our spacious brand new office, where every employee works on the same purpose: being the number one booking platform in Romania.
Warsaw
Noclegi.pl Sp.z.o.o.
Our Polish team works in our downtown, office in the capital of Warsaw. Our management, sales, marketing and customer service teams of more than 10 colleagues serve the guests and hoteliers throughout Poland.
Zagreb
Szallas D.o.o.
Since the Croatian market is the No1 destination for CEE travelers, we have opened an office in the capital. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve had to close its doors, but our local team did not stop working on providing the best services to our customers.
Lublin
Nocowanie
Nocowanie.pl is headquartered in the modern Centrum Zana Office Park at 14 Nałęczowska Street in Lublin. More than 100 specialists, including the Finance and Administration Department, HR Department, Creation and Project Execution Team, Product Development Department, IT Department, Sales and Customer Service Department work together on 1300 sqm.
Group management
The group management team is responsible for the strategic and operational management of Szallas Group. We make sure to find the right balance between the standardized region-wide rules and guidelines but always leaving enough flexibility for the HU, CRO, CZ&SK, RO, PL managements. The bi-weekly group management meetings are the main events to align the operation to share best-practice and know-how within the regional group.
Ferenc Rigó, CEO
Cluj-Napoca (RO) since 2024
Ferenc is the Co-Founder of Travelminit. He gained experience in the travel industry while working at hotel chains, global online platforms and different digital products in Ireland. He believes in the entrepreneurial mindset, long term strategy and team power, which led Travelminit to grow at a 140% CAGR in the last 5 years. His main responsibility now is to build Szallas Group (through Travelminit) to the largest OTA in Romania. He spends his free time outdoors with his family, going camping or doing winter sports.
Péter Sziebig, Chief Product Officer
Budapest (HU) and Warsaw (PL) since 2016
Péter has been a pioneer, trying to get a hold on the Polish online travel market since 2016. After an acquisition and multiple product and service design loops, he has led the Noclegi.pl team to successfully ride the waves of the tourism boosting BON program in 2020. Beside his Polish duties, Peter is also responsible for the Group platform integration and the online payment service in Hungary. He is a seasoned traveler; with biweekly trips to Warsaw and multiple vacations each year with his wife and 3 children.
Dániel Gönci, CZ&SK Country Director
Budapest (HU) and Liberec (CZ) since 2018
Daniel joined the Szallas team at the time of the Hotel.cz a.s. acquisition in 2018. He has successfully taken over the leadership from the founder and integrated the strong local team into the regional group. Apart from his Czech duties, he is also responsible for the Szallas Group communication activities. He has a serious backpacker track record, with travel experiences from six continents, plus an expat year in Malaysia. In recent years he traveled biweekly to Liberec (CZ) and multiple times a year to regional destinations with his 4 kids.
Tamás Szabó, HU Country Director
Budapest (HU) since 2021
Tamás joined Szallas Group in February 2021 to take over parts of the Hungarian operations from Józsi and Kata. He has 20 years of professional experience working in industries like telecommunications, software development, and sports. His background is in business and marketing, but he has always had a passion for technology – all starting with a Commodore 64. He enjoys traveling all around the world, focusing on European destinations with his wife and their 3 kids.
Tomasz Machała, PL Country Director
Lublin (PL) since 2016
Tomasz has been responsible for operations in Poland (Noclegi.pl and Nocowanie.pl) from November 2022. Previously, he was the CEO of Nocowanie.pl for two years. Tomasz has been associated with Wirtualna Polska since 2016. He worked as the editor-in-chief of all WP websites, vice president responsible for the publishing product and finally CEO of the WP Pilot tv streaming service. Previously, Tomasz for 20 years was a journalist associated with the Newsweek weekly and leading Polish TV stations. Hobbies are family, campers, hunting dog and coffee.
Krisztina Agárdi, Head of Group HR & Communications
Budapest (HU) since 2019
Krisztina has been engaged with content, communication and people management in a host of fields from book publishing, university services and e-commerce. She joined Szallas Group in 2019 as CEO assistant, with a strong focus on internal communication from day one. In her free time she’d most likely be found in a theatre, in a museum, hiking in Hungary and the neighbouring countries, or simply reading on the couch – if her 4 kids allow her.
Eszter Gubucz, Group CTO
Budapest (HU) and Miskolc (HU) since 2024
Eszter joined Szallas Group in January 2024 to tend to the Group CTO responsibilities. Her background is in software development in various industries – telecommunication, automotive and e-commerce. As the CTO, she is responsible for the technology side of the Group platform integration initiatives and the well-being and professionalism of people in the technology department. She loves to travel to domestically and internationally for hiking and beach destinations.
Gerald Grace, Group CFO
Budapest (HU) since 2023
Gerald Grace, CFO of the Group since September 2023, is responsible for the finance operations of the Group with the goal of building a regional finance organization that can support the exciting growth and expansion plans of the company. He is qualified as a Chartered Accounting with KPMG Dublin; with over 30 years of professional experience in C-level executive roles in various companies including Invitech Hungary, GTS Central Europe and Six Degrees UK. Gerry is originally from Ireland and enjoys travelling and bee keeping.
Our mission statement
Szallas Group is a team of passionate experts with the goal to make people happier by providing local and regional travel experiences in cooperation with our partners.
Our vision statement
Szallas Group is to become the largest and most trusted provider of innovative online tourism platforms in the CEE region.
Our core values
1We do our work with passion so all challenges and tasks are solvable for us.
FIFA World Cup
During the FIFA World Cup update the datasheet of the Fan Zone every single day in order to enter the competition for Google’s 1st place. Our team gained many pictures and even videos from the venue and we succeeded; the event became the site’s most visited event of all times!
Dzsenifer Orosz, Tourism Associate, Hungary
The show must go on
We were all very excited and nervous to relaunch our marketing activities after the first wave of the pandemic. Our first campaign launched at midnight and I couldn’t help but check our website at 0:01 from my phone to see if everything was okay (even though no one asked me to do so). I quickly realized that the landing page was broken, so I sent out a Skype message, wondering if anyone else was awake. I was pleasantly surprised to see that others from the marketing team were also online, passionately discussing the problem. Together we reached out to the developers and the bug was fixed by the morning. I cherish every moment of working in a passionate team like ours. 🙂
Beatrix Trepess, Szallas.hu Social Media & PR manager, Hungary
Voucher for Black Friday
Only 2-3 days before our Black Friday campaign, a popular wellness hotel didn’t want to participate as they couldn’t accept the word “voucher” for financial reasons. They would let the hotel appear if we changed the word “voucher” to “package” everywhere. Józsi, our CEO sat next to me and together we changed the terms and conditions, the confirmation letters and every text appearing on Szallasguru.hu. Many developers, a product manager, lawyers, finance and customer service colleagues worked on this process that normally takes about 3-4 weeks. We made it in 1 day and success followed; this hotel gained more than 1000 vouchers (or packages:)).
Orsolya Gonda, HU Sales Team Leader, Hungary
Picturesque Balaton
Beaches at Lake Balaton have a raised role on the program’s site of Szallas.hu. Our content is really good but we did not get enough pictures about them from our local partners. Therefore, at the beginning of summer we decided to go and take the pictures for ourselves; we planned the detailed routes and took the pictures of 100 beaches in 5 days.
Dzsenifer Orosz, Tourism Associate, Hungary
2Honesty: we speak openly with our partners, colleagues and clients because we trust each other.
Transparency above all
The Group CEO has a monthly presentation for every colleague about financial results, news and happenings in the company. During the pandemic, we knew that the future of our company depended on our work, so we did our best and did not give up. If the company had not spoken about this honestly with us, we would not have put this much effort into our work.
F***ing good!
One night I checked my phone and a partner answered to me to our reservation mail: “Check this accommodation, it is f***ing good!” Not much later I received a second email, saying that he wanted to forward it to one of his colleagues and he was so sorry. That night I made the reservation for them and responded that it is honorable if they like our suggested accommodations.
Milán Fülöp, Szallas Group Corporate Team Leader, Hungary
3Customer and partner focus: we are committed to travelers and to service providers.
Moving in
Someone was looking for a long-term accommodation but did not mention that he had been moving and was arriving with a removal truck. As this information only turned out on the day of arrival, during the 3-hour-long drive we were in touch with our accommodation partner and our client, and were able to find a compromised solution for the situation. It was a challenging race against time but all parties were content with the results.
Milán Fülöp, Szallas Group Corporate Team Leader, Hungary
Your knobhead
I was activating a new partner who could not handle the interface. We discussed her ideas on how she would like to sell her accommodation. By the time she finished, I had already set up the interface for her. She was beside herself with joy. The next day she called me and said: “Hi Szilvi, it is me, your knobhead! I have a problem again but I am sure you can help me…”
Szilvia Tóth, HU Partner Team Leader, Hungary
Gratefulness
Castle of Füzér won 2nd place at the Tourist Attraction competition of 2020. They were very grateful to us for our support: we got mugs, postcards, fridge magnets and keychains by post, together with a letter. It said: “We are really happy that we won this prize. It could not have happened without your help, thank you for your cooperation!”
Dzsenifer Orosz, Tourism Associate, Hungary
4We believe in continuous development therethrough we can flexibly adapt to any situation, that is what drives the company forward.
Lions in the house
When it comes to planning campaigns, our marketing team operates somewhat like a creative agency – we get together and have brainstorming sessions, gather best practices and go crazy with new ideas. But there’s one thing marketers don’t usually get to try on the client side: creative competitions. However, when Dorina (Head of Marketing) and I came up with the idea of enrolling in the 2020 Cannes Young Lions competition, our managers were super supportive and let us off work for the occasion. Working together on the brief was an amazing experience; challenging yet rewarding. Not only did we develop new skills and get closer as teammates, we also won the local round and made it to the international finals, where we got shortlisted as the top 7 Young Marketer teams in the world.
Beatrix Trepess, Szallas.hu Social Media & PR manager, Hungary
Helpfulness
I remember how nervous I was when I was hired as I did not have any previous experience in this field. Moreover, it was during the pandemic so the company could easily decide to let me go. But they did not. Instead, I got every opportunity to close up and develop my skills. It is rare to have a job that is your hobby as well and feel that you could not have any better workplace.
Exchanging ideas
Our Czech sales colleagues came to Budapest to change experiences. It was interesting to see how they look for solutions for the same problems we have. We could learn a lot from each other and it was a great experience that I can still use today.
Milán Fülöp, Szallas Group Corporate Team Leader, Hungary
5We base our decisions on data.
Success of a SEO software
In February 2019, we were at the 14th place in Google ranking for the keyword “sights”. Then we started to use the SE Ranking Seo software and thanks to that, in 2021, we were able to get the first 3 places.
Dzsenifer Orosz, Tourism Associate, Hungary
BI system rules
When we analyze our data independently it hasn’t been consistent; the analysis has taken a long time and so the results have been inconsistent as well. With our BI system, we created an integrated database that our colleagues can easily use. It is so good to see that more and more colleagues use the system on a daily basis. I believe that this system makes the daily tasks easier and we can make faster decisions built on consistent, reachable data.
Kitti Jasztrabszki, Junior Data Specialist, Hungary