Editorial: Preparing for a better tourist season

Albania needs to diversify its tourist sources and provide better services to reach its full tourist potential.
As the summer and the high tourist season come to a close, it appears 2014 was better than last year, with a 14 percent increase in visitor numbers, according to government figures released at the end of August.
However, much work remains to be done, as Albania needs to diversify its tourist sources and provide better services to reach its full tourism potential.
Last year, 2013, was a dismal year for a series of reasons. They related to the lingering European economic crisis, summer general elections and transition to a new government as well as ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia preferring to take their vacations outside the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which has been falling in the middle of the summer in recent years.
Furthermore, for the first time in a decade, the tourism sector registered a negative balance sheet of around 6 million euros in 2013. The tourism sector had contributed 50 to 100 million euros annually in Albania’s current account. Last year, Albania lost six places in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index, ranking worse to its regional competitors mainly due to poor business environment and infrastructure. In its latest report, London-based World Travel & Tourism Council said the direct contribution of Travel & Tourism to Albania’s GDP was 68.1 billion leks (478 million euros) accounting for only 4.8 percent of total GDP.
We don’t have the full numbers for 2014 yet, but in a press conference, Prime Minister Edi Rama said there had been a 14 percent increase compared to last year, with a total of 1 million non-resident visitors. This, even as several of last year’s challenges remained in place. Coupled with some unseasonably rainy weather, 2014 could have been much worse, but it could have also been a lot better should some of the previous years’ lessons been learned.
The first lesson is to develop a year-round tourist approach. With its cultural wealth and mild climate, Albania must push tourism that goes beyond sun and sand.
Second, Albania must also seek to diversify the sources of tourists. The typical tourist Albania is attracting from outside the country’s borders is ethnic Albanian from landlocked Kosovo or Macedonia, or an Albanian worker abroad who comes home to visit the family. They are wonderful visitors and a perfect fit for Albania, but, economically speaking, they spend on average less than the typical international tourist and the ties to Albania are likely to grow weaker over time. Unless Albania diversifies its source countries for tourists, this sector is likely to stay at current levels.
Third, to attract more international tourists, Albania needs to vastly upgrade its tourist services. From waiters who never smile to a chaotic transportation system and tourism infrastructure, Albania’s welcome to international visitors often leaves to be desired. Better education and better standards must be put in place.
The country has been getting some good coverage by international travel publications, and the most adventurous of the international tourists – the backpackers and the RV rollers – are already here, but in terms of ultimate revenue and well-paid tourism jobs, unless the country starts attracting the higher-end tourism crowd that Greece and Croatia get each year, it will continue to lag behind the rest of the region and it will not accomplish its goal of making tourism a primary sector of the economy.
For now, as the high tourist season comes to end, there is time to take a break and ponder these lessons.
We too are taking a break for one week here at Tirana Times. We publish 50 issues a year, which means the newspaper issues a double issue once in the summer and once at the end of the year. We will be back with the Sept. 5 issue.