Local tourism sector in the south-eastern district of Korça has experienced constant growth and development over the past few years, while an increasing number of new guesthouses and agritourism businesses are being launched each year in the city and the surrounding rural areas. A new tourist attraction is expected to further enrich the already wide-range tourism offer for tourists who visit Korça.

Prime Minister Edi Rama said that construction of Albania’s first ski resort in the area of Nikolice will lead to an increase in the flow of tourists to the south-eastern district.

“Korça is no longer at a stage whether it will attract visitors, but it has ushered in a phase when the city would face the problem whether it would be able to cope with the growing number of tourists and I believe we have yet to support another series of investments, including the ski resort project in the area of Nikolice, which will led to the increase in the flow of tourists. I have visited a modest ski run around here, but it is flooded by the growing demand and based on the findings of a study we were astonished to find out that around 1000 Albanians go to winter ski resorts each year. And this happens exactly in this country, where if you are to visit the social media networks and the TV channels you would be reading and watching stories that would make you hate this country. But just imagine, 100.000 Albanian citizens spend winter holidays in ski resorts each year. Around 1.000 is statistic data not an opinion. So, there are Albanian citizens who spend money, without taking into account the number of foreign tourists that Korça will attract. And the city has demonstrated this. The Beer Fest alone, a local festival has now became a destination for visitors from Greece, North Macedonia and other countries. Today there are more and more reasons to visit Korça each year and our challenge is to increase the reasons for them to come here. By adding the reasons to visit, we would increase the days of stay,” Prime Minister Rama said in his remarks at a conversation with citizens and young people in Korça.

Speaking about the tourist offer of the city so much loved by local and foreign tourists, Prime Minister Rama underlined that “a 6% VAT rate only is applied to hotels, which is a measure required some time ago by the whole community. The hospitality and hotel operators demanded an 8% tax rate, but we concluded that we could cut it to 6% only. This is to note that the basis for construction of new guesthouses is fantastic, because it is about a family business, when they are private family homes transformed into guesthouses and they turn out to be lucrative businesses as their owners can earn a lot more than they would earn by working somewhere abroad. This is also the case with the agritourism enterprises and guesthouses in the rural areas, where turning a private family home into a guesthouse that meets the agritourism criteria is really profitable.”