9 July 2008 | The Omnix investment group intends to construct a large tourist complex on Albania’s Adriatic Sea coast worth $1 billion (about 638 million euro), national media reported recently.
The group, which has participating investors from Dubai and Qatar presented Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha with their final project for the complex on Tuesday, the Albanian daily newspaper Panorama reported. A Council of Ministers statement to the media, in addition to announcing the project’s worth, claimed it will be completed in four years.

The complex will include hotels, a cinema, an aqua park and entertainment centres.

Berisha, according to Panorama, values the investment as a very important one to the development of tourism in Albania and has promised investors that his government will secure the necessary support for the project.

This is the second announcement in just a few days of a large tourist complex construction planned for Albania’s Adriatic Sea coast. The first, as BalkanTravellers.com reported on Monday, was the announcement that the French resort chain Club Méditerranée was finally going forward with a tourist complex project on Albania’s southern coast, after three years of negotiations and legal problems.

It seems that Albania is steadily turning into an up-and-coming tourism destination. Although the country is still plagued by poor infrastructure, including often dismal road quality and a lack of waste treatment facilities, its extensive – and still largely unspoilt and unexplored coastline, combined with favourable investment conditions and an increasing political and economic stability, are starting to attract not only the interest of travellers but also of investors.