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Why has Janaqi tripled prices again for the tourist season?

2026-05-10 10:03:00, Opinione Kreshnik Spahiu

On Friday I headed towards the southern coast.
As soon as I passed Palasa and Dhërmi, the car was red from the dust of the construction of hundreds of hotels or villas that were still not finished.
I took it for a wash, but it felt like I washed the car with beer, because the price had increased by 10 thousand lekë.

Do you remember Janaqi, Raqi and Fotaqi?

Their grandfather, Nikollaqi, an immigrant from Greece, worked as a laborer on my grandfather's lands, which, by law 7501, were given to the minorities who worked them and not to us, the owners.

On my grandfather's land, with the money from the hashish they sold in Greece, they built a hotel, initially with 2 stars, but every year they increase it by one star and this year they were inaugurating it with 5 stars.
I arrived at the hotel in the afternoon and at the reception I found Janaqin escorting 4 Albanian tourists with a northern dialect out. I went in to tell them, because the situation was getting worse. I calmly pulled him to the terrace by the sea and asked him what had happened.

Janaqi sat down and said to me:
“Kreshnik, we are preparing for the tourist season and we have decided not to allow Kosovars or mountain people in the hotel.”

I was stunned and asked him: why?
He told me: “Last year I caught a couple from Kosovo with watermelons in their room.”
“Bravo Janaq, what else?”, I said, “what have you prepared for the tourist season?”

Janaqi took the waiter's pen and began to write on the tablecloth:
1- We have doubled the room prices, 420 euros per night because we want elite tourists.
2- We have increased the restaurant prices by 70%.
3- We have hired 5 workers from Bangladesh because in the end a piece of wood was put in and I do not give them a salary.
4- We have hired 3 girls from the Philippines who clean in the morning, massage the clients in the afternoon, and in the evening my brothers and I put some "rubber" in.
5- We have secured a quantity of fish from Vietnam at 3 euros/kg, to sell to Italian, Spanish and German tourists supposedly as wild fish.
6- We have increased the parking prices, 20 euros per night.
7- We have trained the waiters to change the prices according to the tourists, with 3-4 different menus. Different prices for Albanians, different for Poles, different for Germans.
8- We have stopped them from taking water and food on the beach loungers and we are selling them a 0.5 L bottle of water for 10 euros.

Fortunately, at that moment Janaqi left and I thought I would enjoy the sunset a little while drinking a glass of wine.

As soon as I took the first sip, I was left with a lump in my throat as the sound of the scalding began. Three workers were working to build a 6-meter swimming pool, where not even frogs could swim, but Janaqi considered it a criterion for a 5-star hotel.

I got up nervously and went to my room to take a shower and cool down. Of course, there was no water in the hotel or the entire area. I had to buy 3-4 bottles of water downstairs at the bar to brush my teeth.

The air conditioner wasn't working and I begged Janaqi to bring me two blankets.
As usual, I woke up early because I like to write on my laptop while drinking cappuccino at a bar by the sea. I get a lot of inspiration from the waves of the sea and I have an anti-stress pill, but as happens all over the Albanian coast, the "animals" don't let you enjoy nature. The music in the bar was at the "cup" of the sky high.
I called the waiter and said: "Please turn down the volume of the music, because we can't stand it either, but you're waking up the tourists too."
He told me:
"I have orders from Janaqi to turn up the volume so that it can be heard at the next hotel."
At that moment, in addition to my ears, which I had to cover, I also had to cover my nose. The smell of sewage wafted throughout the terrace and the waiter understood and said:
"Mr. Kreshnik, it's going to rain, because that's how it always does. The feces that spill into the sea smell even more when the weather is bad."
I got up and went to the car. It seemed like the quietest, cleanest, most comfortable and most romantic place compared to the 5-star resort.

Suddenly I asked myself: why did I come? After all, apart from the longing for the land of my parents, there is nothing left in that place, but they are tearing it apart and destroying all its beauties.

Everything has been concreted and "Golemized" there.
My Albania is no longer there, with parks, forests, fields, citrus trees.
There you will no longer find the coast or the Albanian Riviera...

I left with the speed of the wind and then left Janaq to enjoy the occupied properties while preparing for the tourist season……