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Tuesday, 09 February 2010



Club Med to Build Resort on Albania’s Adriatic Coast



BalkanTravellers.com   

7 July 2008 | The French resort chain Club Méditerranée is finally going forward with a project to construct a tourist complex on the Adriatic Sea in southern Albania, after three years of negotiations and legal problems, regional media reported recently.

The complex, containing 350 luxury villas and a capacity of 700 beds, is to be built in the Bay of Kakome, 220 kilometres south-west of the capital, Tirana. It is to span over 700,000 square metres and also include swimming pools and other sports facilities, stores and a cinema. Once completed, the complex will function six months out of the year.

The Albanian construction company Riviera will build the resort, estimated to cost 75 million euro, which will be operated by Club Med.

The start of the project comes following a decision that the land’s owners are to become stakeholders, after three years of negotiations.

When negotiations began in 2005, international media reported on the resort chain’s ironic connection to that very spot in Albania – 20 years previously border guards patrolling what was then communist Albania’s forbidden coast had shot dead Jean-Marie Masselin, a young Club Med manager who came ashore near Kakome Bay during a scuba-diving trip with his sailing boat.
 

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