TIRANA, May 27 – London-based World Travel and Tourism Council expects Albania’s tourism industry to register a moderate increase in the next decade.
“The total contribution of Travel & Tourism to GDP which includes wider effects from investment, the supply chain and induced income impacts on the economy was 291.6 billion lek (€2 bln) or 21 percent of GDP in 2014, and is forecast to fall by 2.1 percent in 2015, and to rise by 4 percent a year to 21.8 percent of GDP in 2025,” said the WTTC.
In 2014, the total contribution of Travel & Tourism to employment, including jobs indirectly supported by the industry, was 19.2 percent of total employment (182,000 jobs). This is expected to rise by 2 percent a year to 220,000 jobs in 2025 (20.4 percent of total).
Visitor exports, which involves money spent by foreign visitors, generated 191.5 billion lek (€1.33 bln) or 30.4 percent of total exports in 2014.
Travel & Tourism investment in 2014 was at 19.6 billion lek (€136 mln) or 4.3 percent of total investment.
The report shows leisure travel spending (inbound and domestic) generated 77.4 percent of direct Travel & Tourism GDP in 2014, some 172.6 bln lek (€1.2 bln) compared with 22.6 percent for business travel spending, some 50.5 billion lek (€351 mln).
WTTC ranks Albania the world’s 96th considering the country’s expected long-term growth of the travel and tourism industry for the 2015-2025 period.
The Albanian government is expected to make the tourism industry more competitive through tax incentives, public-private partnerships and the opening of new airports in southern Albania.
Strategic investors in Albania’s tourism sector will be offered state-owned property for a symbolic 1 Euro under 99-year concession contracts to develop tourist resorts, according to a new draft law on tourism which has been submitted to Parliament.
Experts consider the new law a good opportunity to attract strategic foreign investors considering the chaotic development of tourism and urban massacres in the past two decades in the key tourist destinations and that a considerable part of the Albania’s coastline remains virgin.
