‘Little Italy’: tourists flock to Albania’s low-cost resorts

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni made a surprise visit to Albania this week, joining thousands of summer holidaymakers who have chosen the Balkan country over Italy’s soaring prices and extreme weather.

Meloni opted for a low-cost route, taking a ferry from the southern Italian region of Puglia where she was on holiday with her family to the Albanian port of Vlorë.

One of Europe’s poorest countries, Albania has struggled for decades to shake off a reputation for corruption and organised crime that drove hundreds of thousands of Albanians to emigrate. But it is now enjoying an economic revival in part due to a tourism boom.

Attracted by its Mediterranean beaches at competitive prices, airline passengers to Albania more than doubled in June compared with the same period a year earlier, according to ACI Europe, an association of airport operators. The opening of low-cost routes to Albanian airports contributed to that jump, ACI said.

Overnight stays also increased, with Eurostat’s latest figures showing 261,000 nights spent by foreign tourists in Albania in the first quarter, up 152 per cent from the same period in 2019.

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Many holidaymakers in Albania are Italians who have shunned domestic trips.

While foreign tourists continue to flock to Italy — with international arrivals up 43 per cent in the first four months compared with the same period in 2022 — domestic travel was down 20-30 per cent compared with last year in certain regions, according to tourism trade body Federturismo.

Marina Lalli, Federturismo chair, said the drop in domestic tourists “should serve as an alarm bell — this year is not going to be a fully booked one”.

The Italian finance ministry said it was banking on tourists to boost the country’s gross domestic product in the third quarter following disappointing second-quarter data, when output shrank 0.3 per cent from the previous three months.

In addition to inflated prices, heatwaves, southern wildfires and northern storms have all led to last-minute cancellations this summer. In Sicily, a fire and a volcanic eruption closed Catania airport, leading to thousands of cancellations and recriminations over the authorities’ slow response.

In one viral video, Indian travel influencer Aakanksha Monga urged tourists to “skip Italy” in summer, arguing the heat and the crowds were unbearable while prices were higher “than in Norway”. 

Traditional media outlets in Italy have also branded Albania as the “it” destination, lauding its ivory sand beaches as the Caribbean of Europe.

Meloni was joined on her low-profile trip by her partner and their six-year-old daughter. They met her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, and his family on Monday and Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

One Italian official said Meloni attended a dinner hosted by Rama on Tuesday. However, several domestic media outlets and another Italian official said she returned to Italy on Tuesday to celebrate “Ferragosto”, a national holiday. Spokespeople for the prime minister did not respond to requests for comment. 

Rama earlier this week described Meloni as a “tiger”. Known for his confrontational style, the Albanian premier boasted on social media with pictures showing ferries full of Italian tourists, ironically labelling them as an “invasion” — a loaded term as fascist leader Benito Mussolini invaded Albania in 1939 until 1943 when the Nazis occupied the country.

He said Italian tourists to his country reached almost “half a million” this year. Italian media put the figure at more than 300,000, up 57 per cent compared with the whole of 2022.

As prices have soared in Italy, international tourists have been lured by lower Albanian costs on everything from hotel accommodation to restaurants and sunbeds. Germany’s federal statistics agency recently found the price of restaurants and hotels in Albania were 56 per cent below those of Germany — making it the cheapest holiday destination in Europe.

Among the visitors was Nicolas Ferrero, a 28-year-old prosthetics maker from the northern Italy port city of Rimini. He described the ferry ride as “chaos” with the many Brits, Italians and Albanians aboard. When he arrived in the resort of Sarandë near the Greek border, the beach was packed with Italians. “It was little Italy,” he said.

Ferrero said he had long wanted to visit the country after growing up in a community that included several Albanian immigrants. Since he had “already seen most of Italy”, this was a new culture and cuisine to explore. A bonus is that many Albanians speak Italian.

Several Italian travel bloggers have also promoted trips to Albania, just a “cheap ferry boat ride” away.

A round trip from Bari to Durrës is priced at about €100. Return trips from Rome or Genoa to the Italian island of Sardinia can cost twice as much. Ferrero paid €360 for a week in a four-bedroom apartment in Sarandë, which was “basic but nice”, and a fraction of what he would pay on the Italian coast.

Italian agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida — Meloni’s brother-in-law, who joined the premier in Puglia — recently criticised Albania’s efforts to compete with Italy on tourism.

“Clearly there are other countries on the Adriatic coast that want to be Puglia but what you can find here cannot be found elsewhere,” he said.

Rama has sought to strengthen ties with Italy beyond tourism.

A proposed “Made in Italia-Albania” campaign seeks to help Tirana issue olive oil and wine certifications at EU standards. “It’s an ultimate goal,” said a spokesperson for the agriculture ministry. No date has been confirmed for its launch.

A rapid expansion of resorts along the Albanian coast such as in Palasë village in Vlorë has caused controversy, with traditional houses making way for large, all-inclusive hotels whose biggest shareholders are often politicians. 

Ferrero noted that his Sarandë holiday apartment was half-built, like many other hotels. “It seemed they weren’t ready for the tourism boom,” he said. Seasonal labour from Bangladesh has addressed workforce shortages on coastal developments, but inland the ageing infrastructure is groaning.

Still, Ferrero said he was considering buying a holiday home on the Albanian coast for a third of the price than for a similar property in his home country. Tangled land ownership disputes could pose a problem, but Ferraro said any issues could not be much worse than Italian bureaucracy.

Filippo de Miccolis Angelini, who runs a hotel in Puglia, said Italians should capitalise on Bari’s Albanian transport links to boost arrivals in poorer southern Italy. Spreading tourists across the Adriatic can benefit everyone, he said. “It’s wrong to send the message that Albania is cheap,” he said. “The narrative should be about culture, adventure, authenticity.”

Referencing an ancient road built by the Romans when Albania was part of the sprawling empire, de Miccolis Angelini quipped: “Ours can be a joint offering — make Via Egnatia great again.” 

Additional reporting by Martin Arnold in Frankfurt and Marton Dunai in Budapest