TIRANA, Feb. 19 – A series of barriers in place deny access to coastal areas to thousands of Albanian residents who can’t afford paying fees at private beaches, massively rented from local government units at quite cheap rates ahead of the peak tourist season.
Inspections carried out by Albania’s Supreme State Audit Institution show local residents face a series of legal and physical barriers, also hampered by lack of a clear regulation on beach management, to have access to public beaches where they can sunbathe without the need to pay fees ranging from €4 to €8 for sunbeds made available by local hotel, restaurant and coffee bar owners.
While legal provisions foresee that 20 percent of the beach area must be reserved for public purposes, the situation on the ground is quite the opposite, with public beaches although on paper meeting legal requirements, often located at distant and isolated areas and not meeting safety standards due to lack of maintenance, which makes them unappealing.
State inspectors say there are physical barriers such as lack of road signs clearly identifying public beaches as well as lack of parking space and access roads. Dividing gates, also present at tourist villages and resorts in Durres, make accessing Durres beach difficult.
The situation in the smaller coastline of Saranda, southernmost Albania, is quite different with only around a quarter of beach area run by municipalities.
The Vlora and Himara beaches, southern Albania, have reserved much of their downtown beaches for public purposes.
Renting a sunbed for as cheap as €4 could be a bargain for a foreign tourist, but tourists to Durres, the country’s largest and most popular destination, are mostly budget holidaymakers. More than a quarter of Albanian households rely on $5 a day, in a poverty rates which the World Bank says are higher compared to other regional EU aspirant countries.
Inspectors say coastal local government units face a lot of issues such as insufficient financial and human capacities and as a result manage beaches as a local asset, failing to put them at the disposal of the larger nationwide tourism industry.
Local authorities at coastal areas including the largest Durres and Vlora municipalities apply modest rates of 300 lek to 900 lek (€2.4 to €7.2) /m2 for the whole summer tourist season to rent state-owned sandy beach areas, in fees which inspectors say don’t even cover increased cleaning and monitoring costs from the population more than doubling during the peak season.
“The massive privately-run beach sites without having a consolidated tourism market, has led to beach sites being considered seasonal businesses and not an activity that could reflect high tourist standards and long-term policies that would benefit both operators and local government units,” says the Supreme State Audit.
Lacking a special law on beaches, but having a coastal agency that supervises them, inspectors say beach management in Albania is fragmented to a series of separate legal provisions and neighboring local government units such as the central Albanian municipalities of Durres, Kavaja and Rrogozhina that don’t apply unified development plans that would consider them as a larger common asset.
Inspectors have also identified lack of life guards in most beaches where safety remains a concern also due to the presence of jet skis in swimming areas.
Authorities also note that negative effects from unplanned urban planning at coastal areas during the past quarter of a century of transition to a market economy has led to Albanian Adriatic and Ionian beaches losing their originality.
The major part of the downtown coastline in key destinations such as Durres, Vlora and Saranda has been overcrowded with apartment blocks and two or three-star hotels build in the early 1990s and 2000s without a clear strategy for the country’s largest destination.
Lacking international ‘blue flag’ certification, Albania’s beaches are not yet decently competitive with neighboring countries with an earlier tradition in the travel and tourism industry and continue overwhelmingly relying on the so-called patriotic segment bringing ethnic-Albanian tourists from neighboring countries or the sizeable Albanian Diaspora in Europe and North America.
The Supreme State Audit has recommended increasing the area of public beaches to 40 percent for every beach site, increasing the number of lifeguards and revising the current low rental rates on public beaches.
Around 70 percent of the coastal land is currently privately-owned, but a long-standing property issue with contested ownership titles is considered a key barrier to draw major investors who are now being offered state-owned property and tax incentives in return for high-end investment and much-needed employment in a sector that is considered the future of the Albanian economy.
Durres beach
Boasting the country’s longest coastline of around 62 km, Durres has 80 percent of its beaches publicly- run, but being located at distant and isolated areas where access to public transport is poor, makes them difficult to reach. Residents living next to popular coastal areas often complain they are not allowed to put their umbrellas in their neighborhood beaches, where business owners, as identified by inspectors, occupy much more territory than they have on contract with local municipalities.
The port city of Durres is one of the country’s busiest cities during summer when it is flocked by dozens of thousands of tourists enjoying its beaches and cultural heritage sites.
While Durres may not be a favorite destination to most Albanians who have become tired of it, it is becoming a magnet for Scandinavian and Polish tourists who have booked some of the best local hotels and resorts for the next four months.
With a coastline stretching 62 km along the Adriatic, Durres is Albania’s largest beach destination and also boasts much history dating back to ancient Roman and Greek times as well ancient Illyria, the predecessor of present-day Albania.
The central Albanian region is known for its massive tourism in its Durres and Gjiri i Lalzit beaches as well as a wetland beach near a former naval base. More and more quality hotels and resorts as well as residential areas have been developing in the past few years as Durres seeks to attract European tourists.
Water quality improves
Five wastewater treatment plants that Albania has made operational in recent years have considerably improved the quality of the country’s bathing waters, giving a boost to the emerging travel and tourism industry, although Albania has to further improve the quality of its excellent waters in order to catch up with leading EU travel destinations.
The latest 2017 report by Denmark-based European Environment Agency, an EU watchdog, rated the overwhelming majority of about 85 percent of Albania’s bathing waters of excellent and at least sufficient quality.
Albania 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.
