Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at meeting on Smile Albania project in Lalez Bay”:

Thank you very much for the hospitality and I would like to congratulate you for resisting hot weather, although you have been resisting high temperatures for weeks now engaged in an important work I believe marks the beginning of a program that year after year will become more and more indispensable and inseparable from the tourist season.

It was an initial test phase, which, thanks to you boys and girls and your commitment, has yielded pretty positive effects, as well as enough lessons for us to draw in terms of how to better organize and further spread program “Smile Albania” which is helping promote tourism and protect the environment. And in this regard, I would sincerely invite you and I would beg you all that in cooperation with the Minister, in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and the Environment, a meeting to collect your opinions be held because after all it is you the ones who have been working and acting on the ground and it is you who have seen and heard for yourselves and have found out how effective the program was, how much the expectations you had at the first moment were met, but most importantly, what do you propose what should be done better next year.

The meetings we have scheduled to hold at end of August do not mark the end of the tourist season, but they are gatherings to meet all groups, factors and stakeholders in an economy that is tourism economy, which is increasingly becoming a more important pillar of our national economy.

This year’s tourist season has been positive in many aspects and successful in many other aspects in relation to our objectives.

Thanks to your contribution and thanks to the extraordinary commitment of the Minister of Tourism, the relevant ministry department, a more fruitful cooperation with the local government units and thanks to a long public awareness campaign, this has been undoubtedly the cleanest tourist season with less trash. However, this does not mean we have ultimately addressed a major inherited problem that is primarily a cultural problem and a problem of mentality. Here, the Albanian patriots are ready to overflow Facebook with the river of profanities or insults when it comes to the rivals of our national football team or tears of joy when it comes to the double headed eagle hand gesture, but they are not ready to stop throwing trash everywhere polluting our own homeland.

Albania is not a polluted country. A polluted nation is considered a country polluted by the serious consequences of industrial development.

Albania is a country littered with trash and waste material primarily because we ourselves are unjust and unfair towards it. It is not the foreign visitors, whose number is increasingly growing, the one to throw their garbage everywhere. However, progress has been made during this season in this respect and I would like to express appreciation for your contribution.

We should further strengthen this component of “Smile Albania” campaign with all groups of young activists deployed to all beach stretches to raise public awareness and give their own example.

Secondly, it was a safe tourist season. Yesterday, we met tourism operators and entrepreneurs in Lezha, who, during the meetings about the preparations for the tourist season last autumn, they voiced a number of concerns over safety and public order in the area. They all admitted that their safety concerns are now completely tackled. The hotel theft problem has been a major concern and a wide spread phenomenon, but disturbing incidents of such nature have been reported during this season thanks to excellent cooperation between the State Police and tourism operators.

The same goes about the power supply problem. Only a 20-minute power outage has been reported in the entire area of coastal town of Shengjin during the whole season and situation has significantly improved thanks to investments carried out during this period in the entire stretch of the country’s coastline. But this doesn’t mean that problems have been ultimately solved. It means that a completely different organization of the central government, the respective ministries and other relevant state structures and an effort to enhance cooperation with the local government authorities has yielded positive results.

This year’s tourist season was safer in terms of crime rate also in terms of the number of drowning incidents and other sea-related incidents. Figures are significant in this aspect too.

A large number of tragic incidents used to take place until a year ago. Their number has been lowered this year considering that we are talking about millions of holidaymakers. We certainly cannot afford to be complacent, but given the minimal number of incidents the fact is that a positive progress has been made. No incidents have been recorded due to watercrafts or jet skis which a year ago were catastrophic as they sailed among holidaymakers seriously threatening their lives.

It was a season with an exemplary legal discipline as far as acoustic pollution is concerned. A small number of sporadic excesses have been recorded, but certain measures have been imposed to restrict night-time noise and such measures have been implemented successfully ensuring acoustic pollution-free holidays.

If we were to consider the number of those who have received care service at the health care centres specially set up to improve and strengthen the healthcare support system for tourists, we can say this system has worked quite well during this season. This tourist season also saw a diversity of over 500 cultural, artistic and sports events. The country’s opera troupe has toured all tourist destinations and has staged various performances.

So, this is a moment when we expect tourism to pay off, when we are increasingly seeing tourism industry as an incredible potential to grow the country’s economy, employment rate and income or salaries of tourism sector workers. Those who claim that prices are high, it is interesting because foreign tourists who visit Albania say: “Albania is very beautiful, vacations are cheap and hospitality is extraordinary.” While the Albanian citizens say in their comments that Albania is ugly, holidays are expensive and the service is miserable. Either the foreign tourists are high on drugs and they unware of what they say and the country they are visiting in, or there is a problem with these local commentators. As for the prices, it is the market and not the government that determines the prices and there could be no high prices because restaurants and hotels would be then totally empty. There is no doubt that Albania holidays are still too cheap. On the other hand, there is an important argument that deserves to be taken into consideration and that is the number of Albanian citizens who choose to spend their holidays abroad. Their number has increased considerably. What does it mean? This shows that the costumer power, the consumer purchasing power has increased. These are two components that speak a lot for themselves.

I said all these in order to highlight the country’s tourism potential we still need to explore and make use of it in order to strengthen economy, increase employment and improve Albania’s image.

Until one year ago, a number of news stories and articles written by journalists or bloggers who have visited Albania depicted really disturbing and worrisome aspects. However, during this year, thanks to the preparations and Albania’s improved image, you have all already seen that Albania has made the top stories and headlines of the international magazines and newspapers. This year, Albania has been largely recommended by the international media as a tourist destination that should not be missed. How is this explained? Who are these people who praise Albania? Are they also high on drugs? Or are they paid by the government? Did we pay all leading international newspapers and magazines that promote Albania’s tourism? No, absolutely not.  It is a series of positive developments and I will again highlight your role and work as part of a whole. When visitors entered Albania through nine cross-border point they found the welcome smile of these boys and girls, who provided them information on the country’s top tourist destinations. There is of course a huge difference between a smiling face and an obese and harsh-looking guards, who demands explanations why are you visiting Albania and won’t let you free without bribing him. Such a big difference is also evident in the country’s ports, airports, as well as land border crossings.

We are making a series of efforts that are about to finalize soon. We are seeking to set up a common border checkpoint with Greece in order to facilitate the movement of people on both sides. We want to set up a joint border checkpoint with Kosovo to ease the citizens’ movement and it will help in efforts to increase the tourist numbers during the next season.

At the end of this year’s tourist season we will immediately launch preparations for the upcoming season and the new plan of measures will be revealed within this year.

I want to thank you each and every one of you.