Prime Minister Edi Rama met with representatives of leading German leisure, travel and tourism companies, as well as publishers and executives of prestigious travel magazines in Berlin to engage in a discussion on Albania’s perspective in the framework of regional tourism development, as well as Germany’s cooperative role in this domain through investments in this sector, growing number of German visitors, as well as through the promotion of Albania’s tourist potential and incredible natural beauties in the German market.
In his opening remarks, the event’s host noted that Albania has significantly attracted interest of the German tourists, with the tourist numbers edging up by 60% compared to the pre-Covid pandemic period, emphasizing that Albania is clearly a future destination for Germans with its beaches, culture, the lively city life in Tirana and the short flight distance to Germany.
The participants agreed that Albania has an excellent potential in the German market and showed interest in Albania’s tourism offer in the future.
Taking the floor, Prime Minister Rama said, among other things, that the Albanian government’s target is to make Albania a regional champion for tourism by 2030.
“Let me tell you that I have never ever imagined having the privilege of being among so many journalists, who are not interested in politics, but in life. This is outstanding and I would like to thank you for that.
Second, I never would have imagined dining with 40 people instead of just four as originally planned. This is a good sign, hinting that Germany is perhaps warming up.
Third, Germany is sidestepping protocols. It’s a really good sign.
I finally decided to attend this gathering today, because at last, we have, not only a very good presence here, but we have something to show and what to tell as we invite people to visit Albania.
It has been a long road. We had to start off from a really bad position and practically facing a lot of prejudices we had to stave off. We still have a long way to go, but the very fact that you are here shows that we have been moving forward in the right direction.
Albania boasts not only its beaches and stunning coast or the mind boggling landscape and mountains, but it also offers genuine hospitality and the warm vibe.
We succeeded. Our tourism industry sector is growing. We started from zero whereas more than 260 agritourism destinations are now operational and the sector is increasingly improving.
Albania is the place to be for the foreign visitors, as you will all feel at home.
Tourism figures are following an upward trend in every country and from every country. Our international airport was the first in Europe to record a 123% post-pandemic rebound last year, according to official data from the European air transport agency.
New hotels and other accommodation facilities are being built everyday and we should definitely do a lot more for elite tourism. We have already embarked on this effort, but we should definitely develop elite luxury tourism, while hard work has been done to best analyze legislation of the neighboring countries and draft legislation that will be really attractive to investors.
Developing the tourism sector is both a major ambition and challenge, because we need to strike a balance between the development, environment protection and nature conservation.
In the last few years, we have expanded the area of the protected zones.
A major event on declaring Vjosa River a National Park is set to take place in the coming weeks.
It is very important for Europe as it is said to be one of the last wild free-flowing rivers in Europe. It is definitely the last one, because the other water streams were transformed into “tigers” and “cats” to serve the European economy, but Europe is now asking us to protect the last wild river and we wish to do so. Vjosa River represents a huge potential for tourism development and we will protect it. Of course, they say we need to invest, but we should be very careful about what we invest in tourism, because we should constantly move towards a nature-based elite tourism, not old-fashioned luxurious tourism.
It is not easy at all, but we are doing our utmost efforts to deliver. We hope to deliver on our goal to transform Albania into a regional champion for tourism by 2030. Of course, by regional champion I don’t mean that we would defeat Greece, Croatia or Turkey. However, we wish to become champions and leave other countries behind. Albania is set to become a net energy exporter and fully meet its domestic demand for energy by 2029,” PM Rama said.