The number of travelers entering Albania with foreign documents remained flat during July, while the number of those entering for vacation or visiting relatives fell by 3.3%, official statistics show. In the same period, there was an increase in transit visitors.
The number of travelers with foreign documents visiting Albania for tourist reasons or family visits decreased by 3.3% in July compared to July last year, while the number of Albanians who chose to travel abroad increased significantly by 11%, according to official data recently published by the Institute of Statistics.
The number of foreign visitors for tourism purposes increased by 31 and 35% respectively in 2022 and 2023, contributing to about a quarter of all economic growth in these years. The growth rate slowed to 16% in 2024, while for the seven-month period from January to July this year, there was an increase of 1.1%, mainly during the first months of the year. August data is expected to show whether the decline is a trend or a temporary event.
Albania experienced a significant increase in the number of travelers in the period following the COVID-19 pandemic, part of which was fueled by the higher demand of the population of European countries for travel, while part of which was fueled by cheaper airline tickets for the Albanian immigrant population, a significant portion of whom use the citizenship documents they received after emigration.
According to INSTAT data, "Accommodation and food services", the sector that includes tourism, grew by 35% in 2023 and 8% in 2024. The sector in question currently accounts for 4.1% of the national economy.
During the first seven months of this year, visitors for tourist purposes who showed up at the border with identification documents from other countries were 6.1 million.
Kosovo, the country from which more than one in every three "foreign" travelers usually come, marked a 5% decline this year for the entire seven-month period, an expected performance if we consider the fact that Kosovo gained the right to travel without visas for the first time only last year, so that traditional visitors to the Albanian coast had the opportunity to explore a wider world.
Performance from some important tourist markets such as Poland and the Czech Republic was mixed. Around 153,000 Poles visited Albania this year, down 11% from last year. The number of Czechs increased by 5% to 65,000, while that of Hungarians increased by 18% to 36,000. The number of visitors from Serbia increased by 16% to 76,000.
Eastern European markets are considered important for Albania because the economic level of these countries is lower than that of Western Europe and tourists from these countries are assumed to choose the Albanian coast as more economical compared to Greece, Italy or Spain.
More Albanian tourists
While the number of foreign tourists in Albania has increased, the number of Albanian tourists around the world has increased even more. According to INSTAT, in July there were 783 thousand Albanians who left the country, for various purposes, while for the seven months, Albanians made 4.8 million trips. The number of Albanian tourists this year has increased by 9%. In any case, there are still 2.4 foreign travelers entering Albania for every Albanian leaving Albania.
The number of travelers is in any case an indirect indicator of the performance of the tourism sector as it does not take into account other important factors such as length of stay or amounts of money spent. The above data reflects the number of people who have entered and exited, which means that if a citizen has traveled ten times, he is counted ten times.
On August 11, the Media and Information Agency published a report stating that the number of foreign travelers to Albania had increased by 38,000. [Link] INSTAT figures do not seem to support this claim. [Link] /BIRN/
