Free daily briefing on global business news.
From Albania's northern Alps to a Riviera coast clearer than anywhere else on the Mediterranean, places that reward going before everyone else does
Adventure Albania / Unsplash
Most travelers planning a Balkan trip still default to the same handful of coastal towns in Croatia or Montenegro, booking a beach holiday that looks nearly identical to the one a thousand other visitors took that same week. Albania sits just south of all that, largely absent from the well-worn itinerary, even though it holds mountains dramatic enough to rival the Alps and a coastline clear enough to rival anywhere else on the Mediterranean. A traveler who skips it on the assumption that it’s a lesser version of its neighbors is working from an outdated picture of the country, one that hasn’t caught up to how quickly the country’s tourism scene has developed over the past several years.
This gap between reputation and reality shows up most clearly in how the country still runs. Prices stay noticeably lower than in Croatia or Italy for a comparable meal or hotel room, and popular hiking routes and beach towns haven’t yet filled with the crowds that define peak season elsewhere in the region. The infrastructure hasn’t fully caught up to the growing interest, though, and that gap cuts both ways. Cards get rejected more often than a traveler used to Western Europe might expect, some businesses shutter completely once summer ends, and a few of the country’s best sights still require the kind of legwork that more developed destinations have long since engineered away. None of that outweighs what the country offers in exchange, but it does call for a bit more planning than a typical European city break.
