Nature tourism, visitors to protected areas increased by 10%

2025-05-07 19:45:00, Ekonomi CNA

Albanians seem to be increasingly preferring nature to relax, while the interest of foreigners is also growing.

The latest official data on the performance of tourism in the country published by the Ministry of Tourism and Environment show that unlike cultural tourism, which was shrinking in the first months of the year, natural tourism marked an increase compared to the previous year at the level of 10 percent.

"Data from the National Agency for Protected Areas shows that during February 2025 we had 272,658 domestic and foreign visitors who visited our protected areas. During this month, an increase of 10% was noted compared to February 2024. There was a significant increase in the number of visitors in the Gjirokastra region," the Ministry reported in its official statistics.

There are several categories of protected areas in the country that have been visited by both domestic and foreign visitors. Thus, the National Parks category has 13 areas that have been visited by 54,489 visitors, of which 74.4% are domestic visitors and 15.6% are foreign visitors.

The largest number of visitors for this category is in the Divjaka-Karavasta National Park (38.9%) and the second most visited this month is the Albanian Alps (19.3%) and then the Dajti Mountain (16.9%).

"In the Natural Monuments category, 30 areas have been declared, which during the month of February had visitors in only 23 of them. The number of visitors to Natural Monuments during this month is 24,978 visitors.

Of these, 88% are domestic visitors and 12% are foreign visitors. The largest number of visitors is at the Sarisalltik Natural Monument of Kruja (25.2% of visitors), which is followed by the Shënandoit Cave (15%),” the publication states.

Likewise, the Protected Landscape category includes 8 areas, but for the month of February 2025, there were visitors only in 7 areas. The number of visitors for this category during February 2025 is 72,534, of which 71.5% of visitors are Albanians and 28.5% are foreign citizens.

The largest number of visitors are to the Pogradec Lake Protected Landscape (85.4%), followed by visitors to the Buna River and Nartë Pishe Poro.

Tourism as a whole is expected to perform well this year, despite the fluctuations it has shown from month to month and a slight contraction in March that operators predict will recover in the future./ Monitor Magazine