Tourism is expected to have a positive balance in 2024, surpassing the best historical year of 2023, but the summer season itself is disappointing, according to accommodation structures in some regions. June and the first part of July had a drop in bookings by 15-25%, while August improved.

For Saranda and Ksamil, tourist operators claim that this is a weaker season than last year.

Individual sand-and-sea tourism as a whole recorded a “disappointing success”, while the segment of organized tourism seems to be experiencing continued growth, Monitor reported.

The volume of guaranteed contracts in Golem, Durrës, and Vlora for the summer of 2025 has increased by 20%. Next summer, tourists from the Nordic countries are expected to return with charters from the future Vlora Airport.

Albania has turned into a popular destination in 2023 and has managed to attract a significant number of tourists in 2024, which especially in the January-May period created the idea that summer would be an undisputed success.

But it seems that the expectation and the reality failed to fully materialize, creating a somewhat disappointing effect for the summer season where the months of June, July, and less August have shown their fluctuations. In terms of tourist flows, official figures report more tourists, while in terms of consumption and general circulation, the trend is the opposite, at least according to the expectations of accommodation structures and bar-restaurants.

For July, official figures showed that the arrivals of foreign nationals were up just 2.7%, while all previous months had double-digit growth with a record February when the increase was 55.35% compared to February 2023.

This more or less confirmed the concern of businesses that during June and until mid-July, the number of reservations was lower than a year ago.

In total, 6.36 million foreign citizens entered the country by the end of July, but even though this figure was 23% higher than the 7 months of the previous year, the consumption of tourist services failed to follow the upward trend.

According to the tourist operators, this has to do first with the marketing of the country as a cheap destination by changing the typology of the tourists who visit Albania, as well as their spending tendencies.

Secondly, the increase in prices in some cases brought the hesitation of a considerable group (mainly Italians among whom there were cancellations). Thirdly, there was a lower presence of Albanians from Kosova.

Although in the reported figures, this group results with an increase of over 22% until May, in fact, according to the accommodation structures in the areas of ??Durrës, Golem, Velipoja, and Shengjin, their presence has been lower.

Something like this was expected after the liberalization of visas for Kosova at the beginning of this year, but the perception that Albania became unaffordable in the summer may have had a deterrent effect. However, autumn is expected to make the main contribution to correcting summer's mistakes, with cultural tours that, according to tourist operators, will be at satisfactory levels.