Prime Minister Edi Rama is in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, which has gathered around 3,000 leaders from over 130 countries, including 350 government officials, among them 60 heads of state and government, to tackle key global and regional challenges.
The 55th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum is being held under the theme “Cooperation for the Intelligent Age,” with discussions centered on five interconnected pillars of vital importance for a sustainable, inclusive, and prosperous future.
Prime Minister Edi Rama participated today in a session titled “The Way We Will Travel,” a broad discussion and exchange of experiences between countries on the development of tourism, moderated by Richard Quest from CNN International, USA. The panelists included: the Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Al-Khateeb; the Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism at the European Commission, Apostolos Tzitzikostas; the CEO of Trip.com Group, Singapore, Jane Sun; and Xavier Rossinyol, Global Chief Executive Officer of Avolta AG.
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Richard Quest: The protocol asks me to start with you, Mr. Prime Minister. I’ve noticed that the numbers are growing up, and naturally, tourism is an important part of your country’s growth. But how do you manage to make it sustainable? How do you manage?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Listen, before all this happened, we had the challenge of making this a reality, facing the challenge of maintaining balance and trying not to lose what we need to preserve while also building what we need. It’s a very big challenge because Albania has stunning beauty, incredible diversity, and at the same time, we need more investments. So how do you balance that? That’s the problem, a big one. We’re trying to do our best by increasing, on one hand, the number of protected areas and creating more resources to transform what is protected into a source for development. On the other hand, we’re engaging many extraordinary international architects to help us create projects of a different quality from those we’ve seen in the surrounding region. In Albania, we have the fastest-growing airport in Europe in the last two to three years, surpassing Belgrade, which was once the most important regional airport. To give you some a little bit of background, once upon a time, we used to refer to Albania as the North Korea of Europe.
I’ve visited, I’ve been there back then
Prime Minister Edi Rama: The old days, when it was like that, then I think you must have worked for an agency that wasn’t friendly toward democratic countries because no one could enter, or maybe you had some Marxist affiliations.
—No, no, England played Albania, so they had to allow us journalists to come.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: So, I’m not sure, Richard, but who has nothing to hide in the end…
—Well, a good effort, Mr. Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Back then, we either had an airport that was practically deserted. To come to Albania, you had to be a Marxist-Leninist, and I’m not joking. We only had an average of 5,000 tourists per year. But last year, we closed with nearly 12 million. And this is a country with almost 2.8 million inhabitants. The airport has experienced significant growth. We are now opening a new one in Vlora.
Question about the Arab world, for which the Prime Minister comments:
—What really draws my attention is the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Albania. This attraction comes from the fact that you have the opportunity—or perhaps even the obligation, not to repeat the mistakes of more matured markets.
Paris has the Eiffel Tower, it has the Louvre, so there’s nothing much to do about it, people want to visit. But you have the chance to diversify from the south, from various countries, to visit, along with religious tourism, which has extraordinary numbers.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I want to add something important regarding this. Yes, we have some advantages since we are a bit behind compared to what others have done. However, it is not human nature to learn from the mistakes of others. How many times you are told that marriage is not a good idea, and you still get married? So, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are extraordinary places from which we can learn. And once you learn, or as you learn how they do things, you discover that beyond the myths, beyond the stereotypes. They are investing extraordinarily in knowledge and investing extraordinarily in education at the highest level and skills at the highest level. This is what we are trying to do in a different way. As I mentioned earlier, we are engaging extraordinary architects from all over the world who are very pleased to work with us, and we are bringing to life architectural products that you don’t find in our region. So, everyone needs to find their own angle, and when it comes to comparing with Europe, Europe is blessed; it is blessed because you see Greece, Italy, France, everywhere it is blessed by a glorious past. Europe’s problem today is to make up its mind start reducing bureaucracy, and begin to make the continent freer and more flexible.
Apostolos Tzitzikostas European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism: What the Prime Minister said, by the way, is the objective we have, a 30% reduction in bureaucracy over the coming years.
Everyone is in favor, everyone supports the reduction of rules and bureaucracy until it comes to cutting a regulation that then affects those who would cause noise, traffic, pollution. No one has seen any regulation reduced for what they want.
-Jane Sun, CEO, Trip.com Group: Before we bring the clients to the beautiful continent of Europe, I hope, Commissioner, and I’ll be happy to work with you to make the visa application process shorter and more efficient.
Apostolos Tzitzikostas European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism: By 2026, most countries are ready to implement this, and by then, 2026 will see the rest of the countries doing this as well. So, we’ll have digitization at ports, at our entry points, at airports across the European Union, which will make things faster and easier for travelers.
Richard Quest: My point is, when Brexit happened, we’ll talk about it later, the discussion was to allow the United Kingdom, the UAE, and the US to use biometric machines, and it was said that the treaty doesn’t allow it. So, under the treaty, this can’t happen. Naturally, the UK always installed such machines itself, the US is always slower, entering the game more slowly, but once they do, they do it better than anyone else, biometric entries, biometric passes, and so on.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Even at our airport, you don’t need to wait; you don’t have to wait for anyone. You just use the machine, place your passport, and enter.
Apostolos Tzitzikostas: This is something that’s in many EU countries. By 2026, this will happen horizontally in all member states. This is a good thing because it will save time and save money, not just small change, but a lot of money, Richard.
Xavier Rossinyol, Global Chief Executive Officer, Avolta AG:I want to say something, Commissioner, and this is for free because, in fact, there will be a lot of time for passengers to stay at the airport, which will bring income. So, make it happen as quickly as possible.
Richard Quest: One thing that interests me is that when we talk about how we’ll manage this growth, I haven’t heard yet, I have the impression that we missed the opportunity after the pandemic for a discussion on tourism, where and why you don’t like it—how do you prefer we say “imbalanced tourism”? But we didn’t do anything. For example, I was on the first flight to Dubrovnik, I was in Prague’s square when it just reopened.
Apostolos Tzitzikostas: This is the role of destination management organizations that we ask all regions and destinations to implement.
Richard, once again, because it’s very important. All the destinations were mainly interested in how they would promote the destination, but that’s no longer enough. Imbalanced tourism, or what we see happening in one or two months in certain places in Europe, what we need is destination management where flows are monitored, ensuring, by using artificial intelligence tools, we have data for tourism, and so on. Ensuring, for example, that cruise ships arrive in an organized manner at the destination, not all at the same time, at the same hour, or at the same place, because what we need to do is take this added value of tourism and ensure that this added value reaches every village, every house, every destination.
Richard Quest: I completely agree with this, but you are so far from this destination. I was in Lisbon with the mayor, and I saw this incredible ship of people who disembarked, then re-boarded, and so on, but I don’t know if there’s a clear or obvious solution for this.
Ahmed Al-Khateeb,Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia: It’s a big industry, a big business. Let’s look at it as a business. Countries need to compete to make it easier to enter, but also be cost-effective. For example, today you travel to destinations and cities, and it’s very expensive.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: This is the other side of the story, which is the story in itself, the cost. The cost is very important to make it cost-effective, but also to make it worthwhile at what cost? For tourists, for travelers, for everyone.
However, is there perhaps a mindset when it comes to this imbalanced tourism that the economy is somehow used as a tool to charge people to go somewhere or to a different place? However, no one will do that because it will give a premium or an element of reward to those who can afford such a thing.
Xavier Rossinyol, Global Chief Executive Officer, Avolta AG:Nevertheless, we lack technology. We lack technology as an instrument to align both of these factors.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I want to continue with this because we have an expression in Albania: “You’ll live longer than I will,” because we have this saying in Albania, when you say something like “you took the words out of my mouth,” you tell the other person that they will live longer than you. So, congratulations, I will live a long life, by the way, but this is exactly the point—the park in Barcelona, an extraordinary park that was flooded with people, who wanted to enter in extraordinary lines, while with digital solutions and reservations, on one hand, you don’t waste time in queues, and on the other hand, the number of people who could enter, or who wanted to enter, was managed without increasing costs.
-How do you ensure that you don’t use tourism portfolio for a place that has never been, will never be, and simply a place to place someone there?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: What does this mean? Tourism, for us is something new. It is an industry we are building, and from which we are finally seeing extraordinary development in all aspects, from opening up our mountains for tourists who want to climb, to the proposal by Jared Kushner and his family to build and develop, even one of the largest companies from the Middle East, which is developing a tourist port, and so on. So there is no chance that we will undermine tourism. Tourism is our main horse for the battle.
-A place you would like to visit in the next 12 months?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Without a doubt, Saudi Arabia! However, listen, in all the rankings published, not by us, but by others, you can see that the leading countries in tourism development are side by side—Saudi Arabia, Albania, and Qatar—but we didn’t have the World Cup.
