Kumbaro: 3.8 million visitors to the protected areas in January-August

2024-10-07 14:46:00, Aktualitet CNA

Kumbaro: 3.8 million visitors to the protected areas in January-August

Minister of Tourism and Environment, Mirela Kumbaro

The Minister of Tourism and Environment, Mirela Kumbaro, has held a meeting with operators of natural tourism, guesthouses and agrotourism near the Vjosa River National Park.

During the months of January-August 2024, the protected areas were visited by 3.8 million visitors, with an increase of 18% compared to the same period last year.

"Vjosa is a river, but it is also an economy. And it requires us to be very careful, because the first moment we can touch it or damage it unintentionally or from the desire to run a little faster, we can damage the future business. Therefore, this whole concept of tourism, which we call sustainable tourism, as well as ecotourism have created other sectoral activities in tourism", she said.

Kumbaro: 3.8 million visitors to the protected areas in January-August

The minister also emphasized the fiscal facilities such as the VAT reduced to 6% for hotels and guesthouses, for agritourism it will be 5% and 0% for small business.

"These measures, which may seem to have no influence, today have increased the economic chain and encouraged you to invent new forms of tourism offer. Vjosa has become a very good visiting card of Albania, which has no meaning without you. We sent to UNESCO the complete file for which we have been working for a year with the National Agency of Protected Areas, to register it as a special category in the World Natural Heritage list," she declared.

The Minister of Tourism and Environment also stated that the visitors who come to Gjirokastra visit Përmet and other municipalities of the district and according to her, the destination management organization "Visit Gjirokastra" as well as the seven municipalities of this district have the merit of creating of an organized tourist destination model.

Kumbaro: 3.8 million visitors to the protected areas in January-August

“In such a small area, we can hold tourists for up to a week. And this is not done by talking only about Përmet, or Këlcyra, or Gjriokastra. Vjosa unites us all as a unique map with many proposals inside", continued the minister.

At the end of her speech, Minister Kumbaro talked about the income from tourism in the Albanian economy. She recalled that in 2022, according to the report of the Bank of Albania, 2.8 billion euros entered the Albanian economy, while for 2023 this figure increased to 4.2 billion euros. While for the first six months of this year, there were 500 million euros more than the same period last year, emphasizing that work will be done on the further formalization of the economy generated by tourism./ CNA