FLASH
Shkruar nga Irena Beqiraj
This pressure on prices increases even more, especially when tourist facilities are small, fragmented and do not benefit from economies of scale.
In 1956, Belgium completed its first motorway, connecting the capital, Brussels, with Ostend, where the royal family had their summer home. The motorway was built specifically for international holidaymakers and tourists. The new road undoubtedly brought a boom in tourists, as it was never wide enough in peak season and remained almost empty during the off-season.
Also, shops and restaurants, multi-storey apartments built along the coast, construction that destroyed the dunes and drove out wildlife, turned from overcrowded to empty. Large investments in tourism did not save the city from economic difficulties, which in the 1980s turned to special European funds to revive its economy.
The history of Ostend has been experienced in many tourist destinations, and without a doubt will be experienced in Albania as well.
Nothing outside of economic logic has happened. It is the government's approaches and narratives that are outside of reality and against economic logic.
Tourism requires intensive public and private infrastructure, which unfortunately is only used at full capacity during the season and it is difficult to find alternative uses for this infrastructure during other periods of the year. Underutilization of investments significantly reduces the return on investment, increasing pressure on prices during the season. This pressure on prices increases even more, especially when tourist facilities are small, fragmented and do not benefit from economies of scale.
Also, seasonality in employment has caused wages to be about 2.5 times higher than the productivity of tourism-related services, significantly increasing the costs of providing the service.
While tourism in Albania is expanding, the agricultural sector, which should support this expansion, is in depression, with 13 quarters of decline. The country imports most of its essential goods and products. If the country continues to increase imports and experience a decline in domestic production of goods and products consumed on the territory, further expansion of tourism will undoubtedly be accompanied by inflation and further price increases.
The government's over-optimism for tourism as the basic sector on which economic growth will be based has led to the easy and short-sighted allocation of most of the limited financial and human resources there, weakening the strength and capacity of other sectors that constitute a real opportunity for sustainable development. The construction of hotels or villa complexes makes the surrounding areas less suitable for other purposes, such as agriculture and farming, industry or recreational areas for locals.
Supporting tourism development and building five-star hotels is the sure path to a "Hawaii"-type economy, a service economy with low productivity (cleaners, waiters), which will have to purchase artificial intelligence, technology, but also basic consumer goods from more advanced economies.
As a result of low productivity, which leads to a relatively low standard of living compared to the surrounding world, "desertification" (the flight of people, first from the cities, then from the entire country) is the inevitable result.
For example, Ostend, by choosing tourism, lost the opportunity to be a strategic trading point between France, England and Belgium.
But what has Albania lost? No one is able to answer this question.
But, as always, by refusing to understand how the economy works, we have found, in the blink of an eye, the "enemies" of the government's laudable efforts to create the "Maldives of Europe."
They are the people of Vlorë and their greed!
Lini një Përgjigje