TIRANA, March 16 – Albania has joined the regional race to attract millions of potential Russian tourists next summer. The preparations come after travel restrictions were imposed on Russian tourists to Turkey, the key destination for Russians just before the late 2015 conflict when a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian bomber on the Syria-Turkey border, fuelling Russian sanctions on Turkey.
Expectations remain mixed as Albania’s emerging tourism industry lacks the necessary all-inclusive infrastructure and direct flights with Russia despite the visa free travel offered to Russians during the peak summer tourist season.
Albania’s Tourism Minister Milva Ekonomi, who recently introduced Albania’s tourism in the leading ITB Berlin travel show, says Russian tourists are a new opportunity for Albanian tour operators.
“There were a lot of meetings between Russian and Albanian tour operators in the Berlin fair. This is a chance which I believe will be cleverly used by Albanian tour operators,” Ekonomi told Deutsche Welle in the local Albanian service.
However, Russian tourism experts are not optimistic Albania could attract Russian tourists in the short term.
“Reeling in Russian tourists will be a rather tricky task for the Albanians, given that many have already finalized plans for the upcoming tourist season and the small Muslim country has to compete with neighboring Montenegro and Greece as well as Bulgaria, Cyprus and Russia’s own Black Sea resorts,” Dmitry Gorin, the Vice-President of the Russian Tour Operators is quoted as saying by Russian RT news agency.
First and foremost, Albanian tour operators will have to motivate Russians to visit Albania, Gorin said, recalling that there are no direct flights between Moscow and Tirana and that it would take a Russian tourist about eight hours to reach the destination.
“There are 230 resort hotels in the country that can accommodate a total of 8,000 people [but lack the] Turkish-style ‘all inclusive’ format that was so popular among Russian tourists,” Gorin said.
According to him, foraying into the Russian tourism market is most likely a long-term prospect for Albania, which currently receives about 4 million tourists a year and which has yet to be included in the top-50 preferences among Russian tourists.
About 8 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in the past couple of years, picking it as their favourite destination. The sanctions imposed by Russia over the jet incident last November have already sharply affected Russian tourist arrivals to Turkey in early 2016, Turkish media report.
With tourism on top of the agenda as one of the emerging drivers of economic growth, Albania has been actively promoting its coastal, mountain and cultural heritage tourism in a bid to become a year-round destination to compensate for construction and remittances-fuelled growth in the pre-crisis years.
The Albanian government is seeking to attract foreign investment in the tourism sector by offering potential investors state property in priority areas for a symbolic 1 Euro for up to 99 years in return for investment of more than €50 million.
The travel and tourism industry, which employs around 41,000 people in Albania, is seen as one of the most promising sectors to compensate for construction and remittances-fuelled growth in the pre-crisis years.
Tourism revenue registered a record high of €1.2 billion in 2014 when more than 3.6 million foreign tourists visited Albania, according to data published by the central bank and INSTAT.
