The Impact of COVID–19 on Albanian Tourism

Abstract

Objectives: Nowadays, tourism continues to represent the most dynamic and open part of the countries’ economic system. This research paper explores tourism in Albania over the years, with particular focus on the development of tourism during the pandemic situation, mainly the number of entrances and exits of visitors to the country compared to the years before. Methods/Analysis: This study will take into consideration the secondary data provided by the World Travel and Tourism Council and INSTAT Albania focused on 2020 as the pandemic year, compared to the previous years by investigating the movements of visitors in Albania, their origins, and the ways of travel through seaports, air, or land. The travel purposes of Albanian visitors are different, but this research will focus only on those purposes for holidays during the summer season. The data will be presented through the percentage of a frequency distribution at each entrance and exit point, in some cases explained by tables and graphs, comparing the months in the peak summertime. Findings: Statistical analyses represented in this research give a clear picture of developing tourism in Albania during the pandemic year, mostly tourists from Kosovo. Improvement: This research paper summarized some specific recommendations to the government institutions and SMEs specializing in the tourism sector to be ready for the future challenge, even deep dives in the pandemic zone.JEL Classification:N 20, N3 E24, P23 J5 Doi: 10.28991/esj-2022-SPER-03 Full Text: PDF

A Geographical Perspective on the Impact of Covid-19 on Tourism Demand in Romania

“…Consequently, acknowledging the necessity of an in-depth understanding of the pandemic's impact determined during the last four years an abundance of studies that investigated the effects that COVID-19 pandemic had on tourism, which led to a significant development of the literature on crises and tourism. This development of the literature involved empirical research conducted both at a global or larger scale (Gorina et al, 2022;Gössling et al, 2021;Khalid et al, 2021;Plzáková and Smeral, 2022;Škare et al, 2021) and, even more frequent, at a national or local level (Alshiqi and Sahiti, 2022;Cardenete et al, 2022;Duro et al, 2022;Foo et al, 2020;Hyasat, 2022;Imeri and Gil-Alana, 2022;Kinczel and Müller, 2022;King et al, 2021;Payne et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2022). The perspectives and approaches regarding the impact of the pandemic are very diverse among these studies, and while inevitably most studies emphasize the severe negative impact that the pandemic had on tourism flows, on tourists' behaviours and their travel choices or on businesses and employees, their attention was also oriented towards understanding how the tourism sector started to recover after the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Starting right from the first year of the pandemic, a large number of studies on COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the tourism sector has been conducted for various territorial contexts and from diverse perspectives (Aburumman, 2020;Allan et al, 2022;Alshiqi and Sahiti, 2022;Cardenete et al, 2022;Foo et al, 2020;Gorina et al, 2022;Imeri and Gil-Alana, 2022;Škare et al, 2021). However, despite the literature in the field of tourism being rather abundant in studies on this topic, at present more insights into how tourist destinations evolved and recovered during the last years are necessary.…”

Management of cultural tourism in Ban Toon, Muang District, Phayao Province, Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic

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