TIRANA, April 12 – Albania climbed eight places in the 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness report to rank 98th among 136 global economies, making it as one of 15 destinations to have registered the biggest progress, but yet continued to lag behind some of its key regional competitors who have a longer tradition in the tourism industry, according to a report by Switzerland-based World Economic Forum.
Albania’s overall score was once again negatively affected by the unfavorable business environment which ranks the country 109th out of 136 destinations with the long-standing issue of unclear property rights, the poor efficiency of the legal framework in settling disputes, the long time it takes and high costs of dealing with construction permits as well as poor investment incentives as the main issues in the pillar.
Due to poor protection and few international events taking place, natural and cultural resources also rank Albania poorly despite the country’s boasting a mix of mountain and coastal tourism, three UNESCO World Heritage sites, intangible heritage such as iso-polyphony music and cultural heritage dating back to Illyrian, Roman, ancient Greece and Ottoman eras.
The country also ranks poorly on air transport infrastructure with a sole international airport, affecting access to specific destinations that take time to reach and lacking competition which makes its ticket prices one of the region’s highest.
Having opened its borders to international tourists only in the early 1990s after almost five decades of isolation under communism, Albania lacks a long tradition in tourism, still evident with poor international opening due to visa requirements and inappropriate prioritization of travel and tourism affecting the country’s brand strategy rating.
The rapid development of the country’s most promising industry in the past decade has however significantly improved human resources and labor market as well as safety and security, Albania’s best indicators in the travel and tourism competitiveness report.
However, due to the high tax burden mainly ticket taxes and airport charges as well as one of Europe’s highest fuel prices, Albania is rated as the most expensive travel destination among Western Balkans countries when it comes to price competitiveness, despite having one of the region’s lowest GDP per capita.
The improvement in ranking comes after the Adriatic country ranked 106th out of 141 countries in the 2015 Travel & Competitiveness Index, losing 29 places compared to 2013. Albania registered its best index performance in 2011 when it ranked 71st, from 90th in 2009.
The biennial report measures a set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable development of the travel and tourism sector, which in turn, contributes to the development and competitiveness of a country.
A fast growing industry
The tourism industry has been one of the country’s fastest growing in the past few years, attracting more than 4 million tourists and generating about €1.5 billion, about 8.4 percent of the country’s GDP. The travel and tourism industry directly supported 85,000 jobs in 2016 but the sector’s total contribution to employment including wider effects from investment, the supply chain and induced income impacts in 2016 was 267,000 jobs or about 24 percent of the country’s total employment, according to a report by London-based World Travel & Tourism Council, WTTC.
Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro account for three-fifths of foreign tourists visiting Albania, with local experts often referring to this market as ‘patriotic tourism.’
The country boasts dozens of sandy and rocky beaches along its 476 km coastline stretching through the Adriatic and Ionian, the most famous of which are found on the Albanian Riviera south of the country.
Three UNESCO World Heritages, the Butrint archaeological park and the historic towns of Gjirokastra and Berat, in southern Albania, also unveil the rich cultural heritage in Albania, a gateway to the Mediterranean boasting a mix of Illyrian, Roman, Greek and Ottoman civilizations.
Earlier this year, Albania was rated as one of the top seventeen global destinations to visit in 2017 by the prestigious CNN news portal amid other renowned destinations such as the U.S., Canada, France, Denmark, China and Australia.
“The tiny Mediterranean country — once one of the Cold War’s most forbidding Stalinist redoubts — has been Europe’s best-kept secret for the better part of two decades. Sunny, cheap and with mile after mile of pristine beaches and unspoiled wilderness, Albania has made much of what it has after it emerged blinking into the daylight of freedom in the ’90s,” writes the CNN.
As Albania gears up for its 2017 tourist season and hopes to make one of the country’s most promising industry a year-round enterprise, authorities are also opening up key military facilities to tourists.
The Sazan Island, a military base in southern Albania managed by the defense ministry was first used by the Italians until World War II before becoming the country’s most secretive base under communism when it was fortified with bunkers and tunnels designed to withstand a possible nuclear attack that the Albanian communist authorities feared.
The Sazan Island, which initially opened to foreign tourists in 2015 for the first time in 70 years, will now be available for scheduled visits for six months from May 1 until the end of October.
Back in 2015, Albania also opened up as a tourist attraction a Cold War secret bunker outside Tirana that the former communist regime had built underground decades ago to survive a possible nuclear attack.
Closed to tourists for about five decades until the early 1990s, Albania offers a miscellaneous picture of coastal and mountain tourism and has been attracting more and more foreign tourists in the past decade being nicknamed as “A new Mediterranean love” and “Europe’s last secret.”
