As the door closes on 2016 and people begin to look to up and coming destinations in the New Year, should we be looking to Albania? According to a report in Voice of America News, the World Bank just extended a $71 million loan to the country for tourism infrastructure.
"The World Bank said on Tuesday it had given Albania a $71 million loan to upgrade infrastructure in four southern towns to help attract foreign tourism but also urged local authorities to avoid unsustainable over-construction," reports VOA.
Two of the four towns are UNESCO World Heritage sites, Gjirokaster and Berat, and the Port of Sarande and the southeastern town of Permet will also be getting makeovers.
"It aims to create tourism products, site management plans for the four cities and their surrounding cultural and natural heritage sites, and establishment of partnerships for tourism destination management," the World Bank's director for the Western Balkans Ellen Goldstein said at the signing ceremony in Tirana, the capital of Albania.
While the loan was given in good faith, it came with words of caution.
[READMORE]READ MORE: Albania: Europe's Best-Kept Secret [/READMORE]
Goldstein borrowed lyrics from Canadian singer Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" to warn Albania against overbuilding or "wildcat construction," saying, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone/They paved paradise, put up a parking lot."
There is a lot of promise for Albania's tourism growth. With tourism hot spots such as Greece and Croatia as neighbors the country gets some visitor crossover and small, private hotels have sprung up along its Adriatic and Ionian sea coasts, but there is a lack of large-scale development that is holding back bookings.
According to prime minister Edi Rama, "because of a lack of capacity, 25 percent of the requests for bookings received by Albanian tourism companies in 2016 could not be handled."
For more on tourism in Albania, read on here.
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