TIRANA, July 17 /ATA/ – Albania’s tourism growth slowed significantly in June, and greater attention is needed to the country’s international image, Tourism, Culture and Sports Minister Blendi Gonxhja said on Friday.
Speaking during the third panel of the government’s “Double Your Enterprise” programme, focused on investment in agriculture and tourism, Gonxhja highlighted tourism performance during the first half of the year and called for close monitoring of developments in the sector.
“In the first five months of the year, we recorded an 8.2% increase in the number of tourists, while in May alone the rise was 16% compared with 2025. In June, however, growth was only 1.2%, and this is quite concerning,” Gonxhja said.
He said the slowdown represented a significant departure from the trend recorded earlier in the year, describing it as a sharp decline in the pace of growth.
“This is a considerable drop compared with the five-month trend – almost seven times lower. We are facing a very strong impact,” he said, adding that tourism remained a powerful but sensitive driver of the Albanian economy.
Gonxhja said tourism was particularly vulnerable to perceptions formed by potential visitors about a destination, stressing that the way Albania is viewed abroad could influence future travel decisions.
“We need to be extremely attentive at this point because tourism is an economy built on many businesses and different segments of the industry that are interconnected and have an impact across large parts of the economy,” he said.
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