Empty southern beaches?! The truth is revealed, what is happening with tourism in Albania! (STATISTICS)

In recent days, Albania has been involved in a heated debate on the progress of this year's tourist season.

An ever-increasing number of voices are articulating that the season is heading towards failure, as images of empty beaches often circulate on social networks.

But the government continues to trumpet that Albania is experiencing a tourism boom, which according to it is proven by the statistics of foreigners entering the country's border points.

But how does the truth stand?

Capital consulted the statistics of the booking platform for bookings from August 1 to 15, which coincide with the peak of the tourist season in Albania and neighboring countries competing in the field of tourism.

Albania, according to official data from booking, for the period from August 1-15, Albania has a total of about 18 thousand properties listed on booking.

Of these, approximately 4,782 properties are currently vacant and available to book.

For the same period, it turns out that the rate of unavailability at the national level is 73 percent.

This means that 73 percent of the properties listed in the booking by Albanians are reserved for the period 1 to 15 August and in absolute terms this corresponds to about 13.3 thousand properties.

Greece , Albania's southern neighbor, currently has 10,457 available properties listed on the booking platform for the period 1 to 15 August.

According to booking data, on a national level, Greece has an unavailability rate of 89 percent.

Which means that for the period from August 1 to 15, Greece has reserved 89 percent of the properties that Greek citizens have listed on the booking.

Montenegro is another direct competitor of Albania in the tourist market. According to the booking platform, for the period August 1-15, Montenegro currently has 2,246 vacant properties listed on booking. The unavailability rate at the national level is 83 percent.

Which means that in Montenegro, 8.3 out of 10 properties listed in booking for the period August 1-15 are reserved.

Italy , Albania's western neighbor, has a booking rate of 86 percent for the period from August 1 to 15. Italy still has 42,985 properties available for booking on the booking platform during this period.

Italy is a tourism superpower, which welcomes an average of 60 million tourists per year.

North Macedonia is not among the hottest tourism destinations. The country lacks a coastline, but it competes in the market with several lakeside tourist attractions.

According to data from booking, North Macedonia has a booking rate of 79 percent, while this country still has 786 properties available for booking in the period 1 to 15 August.

Croatia , the undisputed champion of tourism in the neighboring countries with which Albania competes, is Croatia. The Balkan state has a booking rate of 96 percent of properties listed for the period August 1-15, while there are still around 4,352 properties available.

Croatia is a country, which is recently undertaking policies to discourage tourist flows due to problems with overexploitation of resources, but also the side effects that tourism causes for local residents.

However, Croatia remains the undisputed champion of tourism in the region, at least according to the booking platform, marking the highest rate of reservations, while Albania remains last in the group, risking elimination from the Champions League, as the prime minister says./ Kapital.al