The rugged Albanian north opens its doors to sustainable tourism

by Cynthia Ord

International tourists are noticing Albania, attracted to its unspoiled Mediterranean coastline and the quality-for-price value that it offers.  Tourism-oriented growth and development, often rampant and unchecked, is most visible in the capital city of Tirana and along the coast.  Roads are widening into protected areas and high-rise hotels obstruct previously natural landscapes. Such unregulated growth threatens the same natural and cultural endowments upon which the tourism industry depends.  

Development organizations such as the UNDP and USAID recognize the need to implement a more sustainable tourism strategy that conserve Albania’s natural environment and cultural heritage while increasing quality of life for local people.  Tour operators such as Outdoor Albania brand themselves by their commitment to these principles. In some of the more isolated regions of the country, such as the alpine north, communities and small businesses are working together to harness tourism as a means of much-needed sustainable development for the area.  

Traditional beekeeping in the northern Albanian Alps

Outdoor Albania offers culture and adventure trips to bridge the gap carefully between tourism development and this geographically remote mountainous area.  Its destinations are tiny rural villages such as Vermosh, Valbona, and Theth. Its goal is to develop trips and itineraries that will bring economic benefits to local people and keep Albania’s environment pristine for future recreation and enjoyment.  

Both fixed and tailor-made tours to the Albanian Alps are available. One of the most popular tours is the 5-day mountain trek and village guesthouse tour.  The highlights of the itinerary include transport to the valley of Valbona via local ferry on lake Koman through the Drin canyon, and guided trekking along a mountain pass between the valley of Valbona to the village of Theth accompanied by luggage-bearing mountain horses.  

local transportation: ferry through the Drin canyon

The cultural aspect of the tours is accommodation with local families who offer their homes as guesthouses to travelers.  Hospitality has been a pillar of northern Albanian culture for centuries, as the oral tradition of the area mandates the welcoming of strangers into one’s home.  By lodging with local families, tourists get a taste of authentic local dishes that the families prepare. They also get a glimpse of the mountain life and agricultural livelihoods that Albanian northerners have been practicing for generations.  The tall stone and wood-shingle architecture of the village guesthouses is traditional, characteristic of the northern region, and highly photogenic. 

The Terthorja Guesthouse in Theth, Albania

As the northern Alpine region emerges in the guidebooks and on the maps for culture- and adventure-seeking tourists, demand for infrastructure and services such as transportation is increasing in the area.  Outdoor Albania recognises the need to meet this demand in a way that will benefit the local people of the area and preserve the environment for future generations.  Rather than encouraging hasty construction in the area, OA utilizes the local guesthouse accommodations that are already available and eager for tourists.  OA also utilizes local transportation and trekking that respect the natural environment rather than threaten it.  In these rural northern villages, the doors are open to the Outdoor Albania brand of tourism. 

Your local hosts at the Terthorja Guesthouse

For more information, visit:
www.outdooralbania.com
www.travel-tirana.com
www.shkoder-albanian-alps.com

Outdoor Albania partners with World Hotel LInk to offer online booking services to tourism SMEs

www.outdooralbania.com

For the past three years, Outdoor Albania has been fostering a relationship with World Hotel Link, an internet platform that provides online booking services to tourism SMEs (small and mid-sized enterprises) through its online listing sites and hotel website development.


According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, one of the major trends in the tourism industry is “increased looking and booking online.” International travelers are increasingly using the internet to plan their holidays and book their accommodations.  


For tourism enterprises, this means that a strong presence online is more important than ever. Unfortunately, small-scale and mid-sized accommodations often lack the technological infrastructure needed to position themselves online and reach the global marketplace.  


Through its “market place operators” such as Outdoor Albania, World Hotel Link hopes  to bridge the technological gap between locally-owned accommodations and online consumers worldwide.  Small business owners now have the opportunity to list their accommodation on a destination website, and they have the additional option of a high-quality hotel website in English with high results in search engines such as Google.  


World Hotel Link’s destination websites cover three geographical regions of Albania: Shkoder and the North, Tirana and the East, and coming soon: Saranda and the coast.  In addition to listing accommodations and offering instant online booking services, these websites also contain a wealth of tourist information. They provide travelers with information about activities, restaurants, events, and transportation.  Each site’s traffic has been increasing steadily, with an average of 3,093 total weekly pageviews during the months of July and August.


“We are promoting the 'real' Albania, and we are looking for small family- run hotels, guesthouses or sustainable hotels which are interested in a free listing of their accommodation on one of our websites.” says Laura Payne, co-founder of Outdoor Albania.  “Our goal is to bring as much economical gain to small scale accommodations as possible. With WHL, we create a win-win situation.”


One success story is Hotel Lugano in Tirana.  Through its listing on the the WHL Tirana destination page and on its WHL hotel website, Hotel Lugano secured numerous bookings during the summer 2010 season.  Most importantly, Hotel Lugano is findable to those who search for it online.  When “hotel lugano tirana” is entered in a google search box, the destination site and the hotel website appear among the top ten results.  


To see how the accommodation listings appear online, visit the three destination websites at www.travel-tirana.com, www.shkoder-albanian-alps.com and www.albanian-coast.com.

The Tattooed Bunker: Colorful “repurposing” in Shkoder, Northern Albania

by Cynthia Ord



In Albania, around 750,000 bunkers form a gray mushroom network across the country.  This drab legacy of recent communism presents a creative challenge today.  Albanians are transforming the bunkers into more purposeful structures, often with tourism in mind. 

Remnants of a Paranoid Past

Built of thick cement and iron, the bunkers are phone booth-sized subterranean fortresses with rifle windows and cement dome roofs above ground.  Communist dictator Enver Hoxha built them in the 1970s in paranoia of nuclear warfare and xenophobia toward the rest of the world.  The bunkers were never used.  When Hoxha died in 1985, the communist regime lasted about five more years and collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  

Only two decades later, this history still haunts the present. Most of the 750,000 bunkers are still standing and crumbling slowly where they were built.  Moving or destroying them is no small task. Each one was built with 5 tons of cement to withstand nuclear warfare. Myth has it that Hoxha hired the bunkers’ engineer by instructing him to shelter himself in the prototype while it was attacked by military explosives.  The engineer survived, so Hoxha ordered almost a million of his bunkers to be built.


Creative Repurposing 



Today, Albanians face the question of how to address these scars from the past. Most are simply worked around, while some have been destructed by explosives in order to build in their place.  While the majority of the 2-person pillboxes continue to blight the landscape with concrete and iron, a rare few have been “repurposed” into worthwhile structures such as planters, cafes, playground equipment, and pieces of graffiti art.  

The creative repurposing of cement bunkers is a telling metaphor for Albania’s recovery from its recent communist past.  One project, Concrete Mushrooms, has secured resources for the research and documentation of Albania’s bunkers.  The organization works toward “inverting the meaning” of these symbolic structures by “giving bunkers value instead of having them as a burden”.  Concrete Mushrooms identifies ecotourism-related uses for the bunkers, such as tourism information points, cafes, and even accommodation, as an area with real potential. 


The Tattooed Bunker in Shkoder




On the highland road north from Shkoder to Tamare, where population is sparse, bunkers are also fewer and farther between.  Here, a bright example of creative repurposing can be found. A large bunker has been converted into a tattoo parlor.  This one is easy to spot -- the concrete is colorful, with “tattoo” painted on the outside dome in graffiti-style lettering.  For fearless tattoo shoppers, ink enthusiasts, or those who are simply curious, it is worthwhile to pull over and see this place and the tattoo artist, Keq Marku Djetroshan, who works there mainly during the summer season.  

Having lived in the United States for several years, Keq is fluent in American slang. When his time in the U.S. ended, he came back to northern Albania with his tattoo business.  He serves mostly Albanians and Montenegrins who cross the nearby border.  Inside the bunker-turned-parlor, the walls display more graffiti and an array of dog-eared tattoo art magazines sit on the table in front of the couch.  Keq’s arms are covered with layers of tattoos, perhaps a repurposing of his own scars from the past.  


To visit the tattooed bunker, go to www.shkoder-albanian-alps.com for accommodation and tour information about Albania’s northern region. 
See more photos of Albania.