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You are here: Home >> Economy & Law >> Tirana: Albania’s Booming Tourism Trade Faces Cloudy Outlook, By Besar Likmeta in Durres

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06.09.2008 Tirana: Albania’s Booming Tourism Trade Faces Cloudy Outlook, By Besar Likmeta in Durres

Lack of infrastructure

(birn) When 16-year-old Gezim Shala first came to Durres he was one of hundreds of thousands of war refugees displaced from Kosovo, after Slobodan Milosevic launched his campaign to rid Serbia’s former province of its Albanian majority. “Choosing Albania as a vacation destination is a no-brainier for many Kosovars,” he says sitting at a roadside fast food restaurant. “The language and a common culture help us feel more at ease. It makes sense for Albanians to host Albanians.” Tourism in Albania has experienced exponential growth in the last few years as the country slowly emerges from a difficult and often tumultuous transitional period.

Roughly 1.6 million tourists visited Albanian in 2007 and the numbers are expected to grow this year. More than half are Albanian expatriates living in neighbouring Italy and Greece, returning home to meet their loved ones. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people from landlocked Kosovo flock in summer to Albania’s Adriatic beaches for their vacations. More than 200,000 visitors from Macedonia, which has a big Albanian community, are also estimated to have chosen Albania for their summer holidays so far this year, far outstripping expectations.

Macedonia’s tense relations with neighbouring Greece, over the country’s name, has made Albania a popular destination for ethnic Macedonians also. At the beachside Drenica hotel on Independence Blvd in Durres, Gani Kapidi sits comfortably amid posters of guerrilla heroes that fought during the Kosovo war. A former mobilization officer for the Kosovo Liberation Army, his hotel became one of the main staging posts for recruits seeking to enter Kosovo from Western Europe via the port of Durres.

Renamed after the declaration of Kosovo’s independence on February 17th the avenue and its surroundings are home to a large number of Kosovar expatriates. Hotels, cafés and restaurants named after Kosovo towns and cities like Prizren, Gjakova or Pristina line both sides of the street facing the sea. “We are happy with Kosovar tourism, people are coming en masse and one of the reasons is that it’s very difficult for them to go to other places,” says Kapidi.

Back in 1999, hundreds of recruits came to the hotel every day. Most were members of the so-called Atlantic Brigade, Kosovo Albanian expatriates from the US coming to fight in their homeland. “A lot have come back as tourists and visited us, making up a good part of our business,” Kapidi adds.

However, while the government points to statistics to show the success of the tourism industry, industry operators like Kapidi complain that the country’s neglected infrastructure is leaving the Albanian market several steps behind its competitors.

Although it employees more than 138,000 workers, Albania’s tourism industry remains largely unregulated, scaring off potential tourists who are not already familiar with the area. According to the National Tourism Organization, only 36 out of 627 hotels in the country are properly certified. Owners often rate themselves and assign as many stars to their hotels as they see fit. Most rated hotels are also in the Tirana area.

Other figures present an even more downbeat portrait of Albania’s tourism capacities. A 2007 report of the World Economic Forum ranked Albania in 90th position out of 140 countries in terms of the competitiveness of the travel and tourism industry. A worrying sign is the growing number of Albanians who prefer to spend their holidays and their money outside the country. According to the Central Bank, during the first half of 2008, Albanians spent abroad €494 million, an increase of 28 per cent on the same period in the previous year.

Though the summer of 2008 has been a good season, Kapidi worries that the government is doing little to provide even minimal services for such an important industry.

The tourist industry has also suffered from the consequences of Albania’s energy crisis, which have led to regular power cuts.

The government has tried to minimize the impact of the energy crisis by ensuring uninterrupted electricity supplies to such booming coastal resorts as Saranda, which now benefits from much increased traffic from nearby Corfu, and growing foreign interest in the adjacent ruined Roman city of Butrint. But as far as tourist operators are concerned, the supply of electricity and water without interruption to coastal areas has not been as promised. “Beaches are not clean, and the water and electricity supply – as well as public toilets - are all lacking,” says Kapidi. “We are trying on our own to improve conditions but the government is totally absent and is not helping,” he adds. “It would not be wise to depend on patriotism alone as an answer to tourism.”

Besar Likmeta is BIRN Albania Editor. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.

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