Albania ranked among 50 up-and-coming countries to watch in tourism

TIRANA, June 12 – Albania has been ranked among the 50 global destinations that will be huge in the next ten years, Business Insider quotes a study conducted by Love Home Swap, one of the world’s biggest online travel club for homeowners.
Love Home Swap compiled a list of the top 50 up-and-coming countries to watch, based on data from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). They compared growth figures for each country by looking at the annual growth per year figures for travel and tourism’s direct contribution to the country’s GDP between 2014 and 2024.
“When Albania emerged from the shadow of communism in 1992, the country was completely unprepared for tourists. Twenty years later, the rugged Albanian Alps, remote castles and untouched coastline are now a staple on the on the European travel circuit,” says Love Home Swap in its report where Albania is ranked 42nd.
The list was dominated by countries in Africa, with Namibia taking the number one spot.
Although some of these destinations don’t necessarily have the infrastructure ready yet to support tourism, they are building up hotels, restaurants, and shops that cater to foreign visitors and promoting themselves as top tourist destinations.
U.S-based APCO Worldwide and its StrawberryFrog ad unit have been announced the winner of an international competition on branding Albanian tourism which in the past four global crisis years has suffered a decline in income.
“Albania, Go your own way.” That’s the slogan of the global ad campaign that will be led by StrawberryFrog and APCO Worldwide.
Albania offers a miscellaneous picture of coastal and mountain tourism and has been attracting more and more foreign tourists in the past few years being nicknamed as “A New Mediterranean Love” and “Europe’s Last Secret”.
In January 2014, The New York Times ranked Albania as one of the top four global destinations to go to for 2014, placing the Balkan country as the single European destination on top of the list. The prestigious daily newspaper ranks the Albanian coast the number four destination to visit, describing it as Europe at its best on a rugged shore.
The rating by New York Times comes after Lonely Planet tourist guide ranked Albania as the top destination for 2011 and the country was placed sixth in CNN’s top 10 destinations for 2011.
Back in 2012, the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, selected Albania as a top tourism destination in 2012. In a travel slideshow on its website, the newspaper placed the Albanian Riviera as the top destination among the six best places to visit in 2012.