The trap of luxury tourism
Why Albanians deserve an honest conversation about economic development.
The problem is not just that the project has been badly handled; it also promotes luxury tourism as a development model, which, in reality, is structurally harmful to economies like Albania's.
The money generated by luxury tourism not only remains in foreign hands, but it also drives up costs for locals.
Building luxury resorts on Sazan or in Zvërnec does not diversify the risk of tourism reliance; it only concentrates it further, deepening Albania’s dependency on a sector that a single pandemic, conflict or global recession can shut down overnight.
Corruption does not merely accompany the structural failures of luxury tourism; it is the mechanism by which those failures become permanent.
Algert Dobra
Algert Dobra is an M&A professional with a background in economic diplomacy and international development. He holds an MSc in Emerging Economies and International Development from King’s College London.
DISCLAIMERThe views of the writer do not necessarily reflect the views of Kosovo 2.0.
This story was originally written in English.