TIRANA, July 15 /ATA/ – By Gjergji Mima/ – Tourism is becoming the mainstay of Albanian economy.
Director of GIZ for Albania, Hans-Jurgen Cassens, stated in an interview with ATA that tourism is important for cooperation between the German govt. and Albania through GIZ because it also contributes to economic perspectives.
“We look into that specifically for the rural areas, bringing people from rural areas into jobs, into entrepreneurship.”
Cassens stressed that GIZ has worked in the field of rural tourism for more than 10 years now with a view to providing alternative opportunities for people to generate revenues in rural areas. We started tourism 10 years ago in Thethi.
We provide basically support for developing tourist activities such as: hiking as a classical thing and mountain biking . Regarding the tourist activities we provide training for guest houses, tour operators, restaurant staff and so on to get better into the business and be better prepared for guests. We have worked a lot in the promotion of destinations, branding, developing logos and marketing activities.
However, a lot remains to be done in institutional setup for tourism. There is a need to have strong institutions in this area. All the efforts that we and others do are sustainable,” Cassens said.
/sm/
