TIRANA, March 6 – Albanian authorities have drafted a new five-year strategy on tourism with the goal of turning the emerging sector into a key driver of sustainable development that can employ one out of three people by 2027.
The new strategy comes after the country has lacked one for the past four years and at time when state authorities claim Albania attracted a record high of more than 5 million tourists and generated about €1.5 billion in the travel and tourism industry in 2017, despite experts questioning the reliability of data on the number of tourists.
“Albania will be recognized as an attractive, authentic and hospitable tourist destination in the Mediterranean and Europe based on the sustainable use of natural, cultural and historic potentials on the development of high quality and diverse products which can be easily accessible by international markets,” reads the strategy’s vision.
Settling the long-standing issue of unclear property titles hampering tourism investments, formalizing and standardizing services, access to public services and waste management are some of the most pressing challenges facing Albania’s tourism industry identified in the strategy.
“Although the market has been positively performing in the past few years, high seasonality continues to remain one of the biggest challenges in the tourism sector. In the meantime, the sector has been facing an ever growing demand for qualified staff and quality services,” says the strategy.
The tourism ministry says the strategy has been drafted based on rigorous principles enabling the sector’s sustainable development, and considering tourism as a strategic and priority sector of the economy, with a high social and community impact, as well as placing environmental protection as a non-negotiable criterion in whatever planning or development in the tourism sector.
However, the Albanian Tour Operators Association, one of the key market stakeholders, argues the tourism sector cannot develop without standards and a clear and concrete vision.
“If we write down good things on paper and nobody applies them, then every strategy is really worthless. We need to lay the main foundations of developing tourism such as standards and most importantly a unique vision,” says Kliton Gerxhani, the association’s head.
“If we lack vision but mix things, such as having tourism, construction, hydropower plants and oil in the same place, then the strategy is worthless. The Albanian tourism faces chaos and lack of vision,” he adds.
Environmentalists and local communities have strongly opposed the construction of hydropower plants along the Vjosa and Valbona rivers, two of Europe’s last wild rivers, saying local tourism prospects will suffer a major setback.
The new strategy’s main goals include increasing the tourism’s contribution to the country’s overall income, a balanced development of the tourist supply and services, creating more jobs in the tourism sector, improving the livelihoods and reducing poverty among local communities in tourist destinations all over the country, growing public investment on tourism and ensuring that tourists’ rights are respected.
The strategy expects the tourism industry’s direct contribution to the GDP to increase to 10 percent of the GDP to about €1.8 billion of the GDP by 2022 and the number of tourists to more than 6 million annually.
The travel and tourism industry currently directly supports 85,000 jobs, but the sector’s total contribution to employment including wider effects from investment, the supply chain and induced income impacts is estimated at about 267,000 jobs, about a quarter of the country’s total employment, according to London-based World Travel & Tourism Council, WTTC.
Diversifying the tourist supply, improving the quality of services through the development of human resources, promoting Albania as a year-round destination, attracting private and public investment and destination management are the five priorities outlined in the 2018-2022 strategy.
Although mountain tourism is gradually becoming more popular, Albania’s tourism industry remains highly seasonal and coastline-based with summer bringing the overwhelming majority of tourists.
Ethnic Albanian tourists from neighboring Kosovo and Macedonia still account for about half of tourists in what is known as ‘patriotic’ tourism.
The Albanian government plans to allocate about 300 million lek (€2.2 million) annually in the next three years, a small amount representing only about 0.1 percent of total government spending, which the strategy drafters say is a result of the tight spending policies in place since 2013.
In its latest Economic Impact Research report, the World Travel & Tourism Council ranks Albania 26th out of 185 countries for its travel and tourism long-term growth prospects from 2017 to 2027, leaving behind almost all regional competitors who have a longer tradition in the tourism industry.
Tax incentives
Albania is trying to lure investors with a package of tax incentives in a bid to promote investment in luxury hotels and resorts, but the long-standing unclear property issue and inefficient judiciary and highly perceived corruption remain key barriers.
With tourism on top of the agenda as one of the emerging key drivers of Albania’s growth, the Albanian government is offering a series incentives for current and new investments in a bid to also promote luxury travel in the country in addition to the rapidly growing mass tourism.
New luxury accommodation units built by internationally renowned chained-brand hotels or under management or franchise contracts with them, will benefit tax incentives for a ten-year period for building and operating four-star hotels and resorts with an investment value of at least €8 million or five-star units worth at least €15 million, according to package of tax incentives Albania approved in late 2017.
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 “A new Mediterranean love” and “Europe’s last secret.”
The communist past is what fascinates most tourists about Albania, which was cut off from the rest of the world under a Stalinist dictatorship for about five decades until the early 1990s.
The House of Leaves museum of the notorious Sigurimi police surveillance in downtown Tirana, a Cold War bunker outside the capital city that the former communist regime had built underground decades ago to survive a possible nuclear attack and the Sazan Island military base south of the country all house the mystery and phobia of the country’s communist leaders for about five decades until the early 1990s.
