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| The number of foreign tourists visiting Albania in million over the years (source: State Statistics) |
"The situation is dramatic," says Rahman Kasa, Chairman of the Albanian Turstic Union and Managing Director at Happy Tours Albania, who collaborates with numerous agencies such as Nordic, Polish, Czech, etc. "Our partners are very worried about the cancellations their customers are doing," he says. Though he can not yet say numbers, Kasa adds that the partner agencies have received many requests for cancellation of the reservations.
The cancellations are mainly from Nordic countries and from Germany.
The Nordics are a novelty for Albanian tourism, showing interest last year. Their reservations start from May and are closed until the first week of October. Initially it will start with a charter a week and at the peak of the season are scheduled five charter a week, as Monitor reports.
"Our partners are trying to calm them down and are awaiting the development of events," says Kasa.
The same negative trend is confirmed by Zak Topuzi, the Hotel and Tourism Association. "There are a lot of group cancellations," he says. "There are also cancellations in conferences and trainings." Topuzi adds that if this situation continues, we can not expect anything good.
In recent years, Albania saw a significant increase in the interest of foreign tourists, as foreign media began to write endlessly about the beauties of the country and after the crisis a few years ago in Turkey, tour operators were looking for new destinations. In 2018, our country has been visited by a record number of 5.93 million foreigners, an increase of about 16% over the previous year. 97% of them came for tourism and visiting relatives and the rest for business, health care, religious purposes or transit, according to INSTAT data.