29 June 2009 | With ballots still being counted following yesterday’s parliamentary election in Albania and still no definite winner, the two main candidates have declared their ambitions to develop the country’s tourism potential.

Although Albania has seen a significant growth in tourism in recent years, Europe’s least developed and worst known country still faces challenges – including poorly developed infrastructure and services, as well as disputed land ownership claims, which could be dismal in its tourism development.

Sali Berisha, Albania’s Prime Minister who is running for a second term – and most likely winning, according to preliminary results, called Albania “Switzerland by the sea.” He told international news agencies that he supports the development of infrastructure in inland regions, in addition to the more developed coastal ones, in order to create a basis for winter and mountain tourism.

His chief rival, current mayor of Tirana and leader of the opposition Socialists, Edi Rama, was quoted by international media as saying that tourism is “one of the most important potentials of the country for its future development.”

At the same time, Rama noted the unsettled property claims common to Albania as an impediment to this development. As BalkanTravellers.com reported earlier this year, disputed property titles deter foreign investors. The latest example of this was the French resort chain Club Méditerranée’s dropping of its project to operate a tourist complex on the Adriatic Sea in southern Albania, following a five-year-long controversy over the land’s ownership.

Another issue plaguing Albania’s tourism development, and one that both candidates also promised to address if elected, as BalkanTravellers.com reported recently, are the country’s poorly organised garbage disposal and sewage systems.

A third issue impeding Albania’s development is the bad road infrastructure, although there is some progress in that department. As BalkanTravellers.com reported recently, just several days before the election, a 60-kilometre stretch of a highway was inaugurated, which, when completed, will link the Albanian port of Durres with Kosovo’s Prishtina. By significantly shortening travel time between the two countries, it is hoped that the highway will bring a higher number of Kosovo Albanian tourists to the Albanian coast.

But, as Ilir Metaj, a tourist official in Vlora, recently said to AFP, “It is easy to make tourists come. It is more difficult to make them to return.” What will cause them to do so are a clean environment resulting from well-organised trash and sewage systems, a good road network and foreign investments which will happen when land ownership titles are cleared up.

Read more about Albania from BalkanTravellers.com