Tourism "Summit", Poles fall, Italians in number, Germans and French increase

2025-10-24 14:00:00, Ekonomi CNA

Tourism "Summit", Poles fall, Italians in number, Germans and French

Albania's tourism industry seems to be struggling to find stability in the markets that prefer it. While in recent years it was the Poles and Italians who were becoming the biggest ambassadors of the destination, it seems that this year these are the most unstable groups.

Official data from the Institute of Statistics on the countries from which foreign visitors came show that for the first 9 months there was a decrease in the number of Poles compared to the same period a year ago. This contraction was 9.2 percent, which corresponds to about 27 thousand fewer Poles in Albania compared to last year. This decrease is mainly attributed to Poles who have come individually in recent years, not in an organized form, and where the main contribution has been the increase in prices.

Italy, on the other hand, one of the fastest growing markets in recent years, leading in some cases foreign visitors, especially during the summer, seems to no longer prefer Albania. The growth in the first 9 months was almost non-existent, not even 1 percent. During the summer, the number was decreasing and the same happened in September when we have 2.7 percent fewer visitors than September 2024.

Kosovo has seen growth this year with at least 2.3 percent more visitors in the first 9 months compared to the same period in 2024.

Spain is another market that was showing signs of growth in recent years with a significant group of organized tourists but this trend has reversed this year and Spanish visitors were down 4.77 percent in January-September 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier.

Growing groups

But just as there are groups that have been declining, there seems to be no shortage of those that are increasingly seeing Albania as a destination for exploration.

Germans have shown a steady growth this year, which for the first 9 months was 22.1 percent compared to the same period a year ago. During this period, at least 372 thousand visitors entered our country.

Meanwhile, France has also been on the rise, coming next year for the first time with guarantee contracts in the Golem area. According to INSTAT, the French increased by more than 39 percent, reaching around 259 thousand visitors by the end of September. In this month alone, there were at least 32 thousand registered entries./ Monitor