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Italians are not separated from Albania, an increase of 14.7%, tourists who preferred us and those who abandoned us

2025-04-24 07:39:00, Ekonomi CNA

Italians are not separated from Albania, an increase of 14.7%, tourists who

Italians remained the second largest group of visitors after Kosovo, increasing in January-February by 14.7 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. In January-February, the country recorded 126 thousand arrivals of Italian citizens, accounting for almost 12% of total arrivals.

Kosovo continues to remain first. Official data published by the Institute of Statistics shows that in two months, vacationers from Kosovo increased by 4.4 percent compared to January-February 2024, reaching 431 thousand. Kosovo accounts for 40.09 percent of the total weight of tourists in the country, continuing to remain the main group that makes the greatest contribution to the sector.

Meanwhile, other groups are Montenegro and North Macedonia, which respectively hold the third place (10.1%) and fourth place (9%) in terms of the number of tourists. In January-February 2025, there were 109 thousand citizens from Montenegro who entered the Albanian territory with an increase of 18.7 percent, while from North Macedonia there were 97.4 thousand with an increase of 9.5 percent.
Tour operators estimate that in addition to an increase in visitors coming from these countries, the entries that are for transit purposes and that use Tirana International Airport to travel to various destinations have a greater impact.

Thanks to low-cost airlines that offer a wider range of destinations than its neighbors, Tirana has become one of the most dynamic transit points, and you can confirm this very well if you fly to and from Tirana, where you see many citizens from Montenegro and Kosovo.

Other groups that have seen growth in the first two months are Germans with a 52 percent increase, French with 35 percent or Spaniards with 33.5 percent, some trends that have been observed during the past year. The Spaniards are even one of the groups that have been coming in an organized form for some time now, also as a result of the entry of a Spanish hotel chain located in several units mainly in the Durrës region.

The Czech Republic and Sweden are also two countries from which the number of visitors has increased for January-February 2025 compared to a year earlier, while a 32 percent decrease in Poles is noticeable. The latter are mainly a group that prefers Albania for summer holidays in an organized form and located mainly in Golem and Durrës with all-inclusive packages.

This group is also growing this summer, according to confirmations from tour operators. The year 2025 is expected to be a positive year for tourism overall, showing the characteristics of 2024 both in terms of growth rate and destinations from which foreign tourists come, with Western Europe gaining a significant share, thanks to the continued promotion of Albania in international media./ Monitor.al