Some current trends in tourism in the Albanian Alps

The Alps are now one of Europe’s main tourist attractions for major industrial centers. Tourism has, for some areas, represented a fundamental economic activity that can prevent the complete depopulation of the mountain areas, ensuring employment opportunities and income.

European Alps

Every year the European Alps receive approximately 12% of the world tourists (World Tourism Organization). In 2001 alone, more than 80 million tourists visited the Alps. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of ski-related tourism in the Alps. In Italy alone alpine areas are crisscrossed by a network of 4693 km of ski-runs, 60% of which are serviced with artificial snow. Cross-country ski tracks amount to 2981 km, 304 of which make use of snow cannons. The situation is similar across the Alps.
The spectacular increase in tourism in the Alps in recent decades has been founded mainly on the boom in skiing, resulting in both strong real estate development and an increasing array of infrastructures and ski runs. Today the ski market seems to have virtually reached saturation point and the winter sports sector has begun to diversify its offer through innovation.
The uncertainty and the crisis in European mountain tourism are both caused by climate and geo-cultural change. This is why, for many observers, the kind of tourism established during the second half of the 20th century appears to be a “worn-out” model, and should be reorganized thoroughly. This will involve drastic adaptation measures. According to the International Scientific Committee on Alpine Research (ISCAR) such new watching grids will be required to understand and monitor the way out of “all ski”, “all snow” and even “all tourism”. Tourism industry has a key role to play in confronting the challenges of climate change.
Climate change poses a serious challenge to social and economic development in all countries. While international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are essential, adaptation to the impacts of climate change must also be integrated into sectoral and economic policies worldwide.
For many alpine areas in Switzerland, winter tourism is the most important source of income, and snow-reliability is one of the key elements of the offers made by tourism in the Alps. 85% of Switzerland’s current ski resorts can be designated as snow-reliable.

Winter tourism and skiing

If climate change occurs, the level of snow-reliability will rise from 1200 m up to 1800 m over the next few decades. Only 44% of the ski resorts would then still be snow-reliable. While some regions may be able to maintain their winter tourism with suitable adaptation strategies, others would lose winter tourism due to a diminishing snow pack. Climate change must be viewed as a catalyst that is reinforcing and accelerating the pace of structural changes in tourism.
Today, adaptation strategies are predominant in tourism (e.g. artificial snow production). As an industry that will be severely affected by climate change, however, tourism will increasingly have to focus on mitigation strategies (e.g. less greenhouse gas emissions by tourism traffic).
The snow tourism in recent years is going through a phase of evolution, in particular the demand side: the tourists who frequent the ski resorts today are very different from those of the past in profile, behavior and needs.
For a long time, talking about winter tourism and skiing has meant essentially the same deal. The winter holiday coincided for the majority of people with “white week”, a period during which concentrate almost exclusively to skiing. There were, of course, the so-called “non-skiers as a result” (often mothers, grandparents or people on vacation with the family “sports people”), but these were almost “sentenced” to an inevitable boredom, made up of repetitive walks in the center of the country or waiting for days in shelters at high altitude that members of the family came back from the “battlefield”.

Today

Today it is no longer the case. First, the ski holiday is no longer the only possible (or better, available for many) during the winter season: until a few years ago, going to sea in winter was a luxury for the few. Today a holiday “in the heat”, perhaps in a Caribbean beach paradise, is within the reach of many people, with similar prices or even lower than those of a ski vacation (without taking into account the not indifferent cost to the necessary equipment for skiing). Secondly, the skiers are always less energetic and more vacationers looking for fun, while the people below are always more numerous and demanding the opportunity to take a more active and enjoyable time on their own. For these reasons, the alpine winter resorts must commit to offer something more than the services and infrastructure necessary for the practice of winter sports (which, however, remain a largely predominant activity), in order to create a more complete and varied offer to meet the different needs of different groups of tourists or rather, the various market segments.