Albania is preparing to officially launch the summer season and welcome tourists, while the government has even lifted travel visas in order to attract visitors, including Russian citizens.

Recently, a speech of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskii at the Albanian Parliament triggered a strong public debate about whether the country should allow Russians looking to travel to Albania for holidays.

In 2016, more than 15,000 Russian tourists entered Albania, a figure that nearly doubled last year.

“Albania doesn’t the luxury, it needs all types of tourists. Politics and business need to be separated. We need even a single tourist, let alone a considerable market like Russia”, said tour operator Fatos Cerenishti.

“I think the state must find a way to filter out those tourists in order to avoid war criminals or people that come here with wrong intentions. I don’t think that the Russian people, who are victims of a dictatorship, shouldn’t be allowed to come on holiday”, said Rrahman Kasa, another tourist operator we spoke to.

In the last 6 years, over 132,000 Russian tourists chose Albania as their holiday destination. Today the question is: Should Albania allow Russian tourists this year, too?

Tour operator Besnik Vathi has another stance. He thinks nothing would change on both occasions.

“We don’t have a significant number of Russian tourists visiting Albania. They started flying with direct charters in 2019, it got suspended in 2020 and then there were some limited flights last year. But if we weigh in the total, the figure is insignificant”, said Vathi.

But other tour operators do not share the same opinion, in fact, according to them banning Russian tourists should be off the table.

“It’s a large market that had just started frequenting the Albanian coastline and the damage would not only be for the present, but also for the prospective future. It is a considerable number of tourists”, said Cerenishti.