With the closure of the tourist season, the operators have made a summary of the past season and the problems they encountered. Mainly the service sector is the one that faces more problems, due to the lack of qualified personnel.

Fatjon Selimaj, an expert in the field of service and gastronomy, says that all the restaurants in the country need a professional growth, where in addition to the hospitality, there should be a professional growth of the service, just like other countries in the region.

“We have a range of foreign tourists who want to find not only family services, but also those who want better services, such as foreign countries. We have personal hospitality, we have been ready and we have not been, not being ready is also beautiful, tourists understand that we are in the development phase. Greater and sensitizing work should be done in school banks. We have to learn from childhood that working in a restaurant is a profession in itself. We need to increase the human resources of hotels and restaurants”, says Fatjon Selimaj, tourism expert.

Pogradec, in addition to the increase in the number of tourists, is fortunate to have a professional school that prepares young people for the hotel-tourism service.

According to Artan Temo, head of this school, the demand to learn a trade has increased significantly, where this year alone there are over 80 students, where the high number of girls’ enrollment is also noticeable.

“By the very nature of the city of Pogradec, students and the interest of students has increased interest. In the tourism hotel this year we had about 85 students. From year to year we have growth, we also have interest from girls in this branch. Every year we have businesses that recruit specialists from our school”, says Temo.

But in this direction, the biggest problem remains the lack of human resources, but also their payment, reasons which have pushed many young people to leave the country, since tourism still works as a seasonal job.