UK tourists head to Albania for ‘sense of exotic’ without long-haul flight

theguardian.com:

Albania has been on the radar for intrepid backpackers for some time, but this year tour operators are predicting the south-eastern Balkan country will become a mainstream holiday destination for UK travellers after a surge in bookings this January.

Interest in the country has been gradually building over the past decade as it has slowly opened up after a 44-year dictatorship that ended in 1985. Tour operators have seen a notable increase in bookings for 2022 as Albania extends its appeal to people seeking beautiful beaches and landscapes as well as interesting culture and history at a lower price than neighbouring destinations.

“Albania is one of those small and diverse destinations that can offer a bit of everything to everyone, similar to Montenegro or Slovenia,” said Tine Murn, a co-founder of New Deal Europe, a marketing agency for Balkan tourism.

He said Albania appealed because it was a “Mediterranean undiscovered gem” and “still holds a sense of the exotic, even though it is geographically very close”.

This was especially appealing at the moment while people were reluctant to travel long haul owing to the pandemic, not least because Albania has had very low Covid infection rates and no restrictions for most of the pandemic, he said.

Albania’s national tourism agency sees the UK as “an emerging growing market” and has actively promoted tourism in recent years. The country is also becoming much easier to travel around as the standard of its accommodation has improved and spending on infrastructure has increased, with a new road connecting the eastern mountains with the western coastline due to open this year.

The UK’s large Albanian diaspora and vocal celebrity champions such as the Southampton footballer Armando Broja