After 40 years of travel to Albania, has it finally come of age as a tourist destination?
Having visited the region since the 1970s, Simon Calder finds that hard-line extreme communism and rigorous border checks are now making way for a warm overseas welcome – with a little help from Ryanair
The first-ever long weekend holiday to Albania ended badly. We 20 or so pioneers had paid (I recall) £295 for a package that included flights from Heathrow via Zagreb to Titograd – now Podgorica, in independent Montenegro. A coach took us up a very long and winding road to the Albanian border. We walked across the frontier into a dingy border processing office. None of the men was selected for an obligatory shave or haircut: we had been warned that was a possibility for hirsute males.
Our baggage was enthusiastically rummaged, with printed matter closely inspected. As we discovered, though, the checks were not rigorous enough. After four days of wonders – the natural beauty of the mountains that dominate the nation, the implausibly preserved medieval towns with silent streets – the guides revealed a holiday scandal.
A family of four on the trip had been clear outliers from the start. The rest of us were adult adventurers, some of whom were ticking off a visit to Europe’s hermit republic. They had kept themselves to themselves – or so we thought.
The guides, who were selected for their faith to (and in) the communist regime, solemnly told the rest of us that the family were smugglers. Not of drugs, or pornography, but something much, much worse: a consignment of Bibles.
Religion – Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam – had been crushed by the barbaric regime of Enver Hoxha, a leader so repressive that he could ally only with Mao’s China. These evangelical Christians had signed up for the £295 trip to try to spread the word in a corner of the southwest Balkans where worship of anything other than communism was punishable by incarceration, or worse.
The rumour on the bus was that a diligent hotel worker had discovered the holy haul in the family’s room and dobbed them in. Sensing the diplomatic damage that could result from imprisoning foreign children, the authorities let them out with a scolding. I next returned to Albania in 1989, for an England World Cup qualifying football match. The intensity of the customs check had doubled.
“The three religions are a unique model of cohabitation, of coexistence. It’s so usual to have a family where the wife is of Muslim origin while the husband is Catholic or Orthodox.”
Four decades on from my first visit, I am taking tea with Mirela Kumbaro, Albania’s French-educated tourism minister. We are sitting in a handsome office adjoining Skanderbeg Square in the centre of the capital, Tirana.
Religious plurality and tolerance are now a selling point for a nation that is anchored at the foot of Europe’s GDP per capita table. For any nation in need of economic advancement, inbound tourism is as good as it gets – which is why even the hardest-line communists on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain cautiously embraced (and searched) visitors from overseas.
Then, as now, travellers bring in foreign currency – effectively free money, supporting jobs. They help to create and sustain amenities that benefit locals, such as the fine-dining Gzona restaurant in the Tirana Castle complex.
From Tahiti to Tirana, there is a less tangible but more human benefit, too. Emotionally, the very fact that visitors make the effort to visit your home makes you appreciate it more. So, while the UK seems to be doing its utmost to keep Johnny Foreigner out (for example by banning EU citizens with ID cards but not passports), Albania is extending a warm welcome to all. And in this campaign, Ms Kumbaro’s best friend is Ryanair.
This winter, Europe’s biggest budget airline has launched 200 flights to Tirana each week on 17 routes, including London Stansted, Manchester and Edinburgh. Further expansion is planned for summer, including flights from Bristol and Birmingham.
A former nuclear bunker-turned-museum lifts the lid on the extreme hard-line communism that, for decades, turned Albania into Europe’s North Korea
Eddie Wilson, chief executive of the carrier’s main operating division, Ryanair DAC, turned tour guide in his announcement: “These routes will allow millions of visitors from major cities across Europe to experience the wonders of Albania, from the white sand beaches of the Albania Riviera to the historical architecture of Unesco site Gjirokastër, and lively nightlife in Tirana.”
I flew to the Albanian capital on Ryanair’s rival, Wizz Air, which is selling many of its three daily flights from Luton for £15. I paid £30 per night at Tirana’s Hotel Idea – quite the most comfortable of many examples of Albanian accommodation I have enjoyed (or, more usually, endured) over the years.
Tirana today has the same quasi-Parisian boulevards, tangled Balkan backstreets and brutal socialist modernism that I witnessed in the 1980s. But the capital is now a lively, cheery muddle, with cafés spilling out onto the streets even in the depths of winter and it enjoys a range of tourist attractions that dwell on its hermit days as the ideological bad boy of Europe.
A former nuclear bunker-turned-museum lifts the lid on the extreme hard-line communism that, for decades, turned Albania into Europe’s North Korea.
For the adventurous but impecunious traveller seeking a European escape, Greece is no longer the word. It’s Albania. A three-course meal for two, with decent local wine, might hit £10, but probably less. Fares on the coaches and minibuses that constitute intercity transport are minuscule. And in areas public transport does not reach, hitchhiking is absurdly easy – such is the warm of the host citizens.
Yet Ms Kumbaro is determined to avoid overtourism and maximise high-spending visitors. “You will not have mass-market holidays on the beach at Albanian resorts,” she says. “We think that we are complementary in this map of tourism between Croatia, Italy and Greece. So we are not going to see lots of hotels being built.”
Neil Taylor, now a travel guidebook writer, was the man who single-handedly founded tourism from the UK to Albania half a century ago. At the time he was director of Bristol-based Regent Holidays, specialising in all the places that other tour operators put in the “too difficult” box.
Speaking from a cruise ship en route to Norway – on which he is lecturing – Mr Taylor says: “It’s a pity that Albania wants to attract only four- and five-star clients. They are well catered for in all countries around the Mediterranean. Albania has little to offer them.
“What it now can offer is excellent three-star accommodation near the beaches, in its medieval towns, and in the mountains. Such locations attract travellers who are quite happy to travel on low-cost airlines and to experiment with fresh food.”
Andrea Godfrey, who now runs Regent Holidays, concurs. “The charm of Albania lies in its authenticity. There’s a unique opportunity for the country to showcase its local charm through boutique hotels and authentic guesthouses. The coast is beautiful, but for us, and our clients, it is a compliment to a more immersive trip which focuses on the culture, history, archaeology, scenery and cuisine.”
I will add: the people. The hospitality in Albania is at times, overwhelmingly generous.
Albania is, though, a nation best explored in conjunction with its Balkan neighbours – who add extra dimensions to a journey to a much-overlooked corner of Europe. It shares with North Macedonia the glorious Lake Ohrid: roughly the size of Rutland, but rather more scenic, with waterside monasteries reflected in steely water beneath soaring mountains.
To the north, Montenegro offers more sophistication. I am glad to report that the border crossing has been smartened up and speeded up over the past four decades. And across any of these now-friendly frontiers, feel free to carry the religious text of your choice.
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