Albanian tourism minister seeks high-end visitors for Europe’s bargain nation

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Summer flights from the UK to Albania are on sale for below £50 return. Beachfront flats within the resort of Durres might be rented for lower than £20 an evening. A full meal with drinks is available in at below £10. But the nation’s tourism minister insists: “We are aiming for high-end tourism in Albania.”

Mirela Kumbaro, whose temporary additionally consists of the setting, was talking completely to The Independent. In a wide-ranging interview, the tourism minister says she is “pushing for four- and five-star hotels with international brand names” – and hits out in opposition to comparisons between Albania and the Maldives.

For many of the second half of the twentieth century, Albania acquired solely a handful of overseas vacationers. Ms Kumbaro says her nation “lived under the wildest dictatorship in Europe for half a century”. Visitors might solely be a part of organised and carefully supervised excursions, with necessary shaves and haircuts on the border for male vacationers with lengthy hair or beards.

The hard-line communist dictatorship ended three a long time in the past, however solely this 12 months is Albania simply accessible from the UK.

Research by The Independent exhibits widespread availability of flights between Luton and the capital, Tirana, for below £50 return in May, on the a number of each day departures on Wizz Air.

Ryanair may also compete to the Albanian capital in summer time 2024 from 5 UK airports – Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh and London Stansted – whereas British Airways continues to function from London Heathrow to Tirana.

Living prices are the bottom in Europe, with rooms in a very good city-centre resort in Tirana promoting at below £30, together with breakfast. Beachside flats on the Adriatic shore are even cheaper.

But Ms Kumbaro is decided to keep away from overtourism and maximise high-spending visitors, saying: “You will not have mass-market holidays on the beach at Albanian resorts.

“We think that we are complementary in this map of tourism between Croatia, Italy and Greece.

“So we are not going to see lots of hotels being built.”

Much retailer is being placed on journey tourism away from the coast. “Three quarters of Albania is mountains, forest and rivers,” says the minister.

Tirana’s Mother Teresa International Airport is at the moment the one air gateway to Albania, however a second airport is being constructed at Vlore within the south of the nation.

Ms Kumbaro says: “To avoid having many cars travelling through Albania, we need this second airport to attract people.” Some vacationers visiting southern Albania at the moment fly into the Greek island of Corfu and take the ferry throughout the slim strait.

The tourism minister takes exception to studies final summer time describing Albania as “the Maldives of Europe” due to its pristine white-sand seashores.

“Fighting against the cliche is the most difficult task,” she stated. “We have never called Albania ‘the Maldives of Europe’. Albania is Albania.

”You can go from the the fashionable metropolis of Tirana, which is already a laboratory of contemporary structure, to cities that are 2,000 years previous.”